FIELDS,  FACTORIES 
AND  WORKSHOPS 


'  .  ■  :  . 

« 


* 


r- 


.  . 


/>■ 

' 

, 


/ 


. 


- 33 


— - - - 


UNIFORM  WITH  THIS  VOLUME 


THE  GREAT  BOER  WAR.  Arthur  Conan  Doyle. 

COLLECTIONS  AND  RECOLLECTIONS.  G.  W.  E.  Russell. 
REMINISCENCES.  Sir  Henry  Hawkins. 

LIFE  OF  LORD  RUSSELL  OF  YiYHLO^l YBA.R. Barry  O' Brien. 


E.  S.  Grogan. 
Dean  Hole. 
George  C.  Bompas. 
H.  G.  Wells. 
G.  W.  Steevens. 
Edmund  Candler. 
Sir  A .  Lyall. 


FROM  THE  CAPE  TO  CAIRO. 

A  BOOK  ABOUT  THE  GARDEN. 

LIFE  OF  FRANK  BUCKLAND. 

A  MODERN  UTOPIA. 

WITH  KITCHENER  TO  KHARTUM. 

THE  UNVEILING  OF  LHASA. 

LIFE  OF  LORD  DUFFERIN. 

ROUND  THE  WORLD  ON  A  WHEEL.  John  Foster  Fraser 
LITERATURE  AND  DOGMA.  Matthew  Arnold. 

SPURGEON’S  SERMONS.  Sir  W.  Robertson  Nicoll ,  LL.D. 
MY  CONFIDENCES.  Frederick  Locker-Lampson. 

SIR  FRANK  LOCKWOOD.  Augustine  Birrell,  K.C. ,  M.P. 
THE  MAKING  OF  A  FRONTIER.  Colonel  Durand. 

LIFE  OF  GENERAL  GORDON.  Denietrius  C.  Boulger. 
POT-POURRI  FROM  A  SURREY  GARDEN.  Mrs.  Earle. 
THE  RING  AND  THE  BOOK..  Robert  Browning. 

THE  ALPS  FROM  END  TO  END.  Sir  W.  Martin  Conway. 


R. 


LIFE  OF  RICHARD  COBDEN. 

LIFE  OF  PARNELL. 

HAVELOCK’S  MARCH. 

UP  FROM  SLAVERY. 

WHERE  BLACK  RULES  WHITE. 

HISTORICAL  MYSTERIES. 

THE  STRENUOUS  LIFE. 

MEMORIES  GRAVE  AND  GAY. 

LIFE  OF  DANTON. 

A  POCKETFUL  OF  SIXPENCES. 

THE  ROMANCE  OF  A  PRO-CONSUL. 

A  BOOK  ABOUT  ROSES. 

RANDOM  REMINISCENCES. 

THE  LONDON  POLICE  COURTS 
THE  AMATEUR  POACHER. 

THE  BANCROFTS. 

AT  THE  WORKS. 

MEXICO  AS  I  SAW  IT. 

EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  VIGNETTES.  Austin  Dobson. 
GREAT  ANDES  OF  THE  EQUATOR.  Edward  Whymper. 
THE  EARLY  HISTORY  OF  C.  J.  FOX.  SirG.  O.  Trevelyan. 
THROUGH  THE  HEART  OF  PATAGONIA. 

H.  Hesketh  Prichard. 

BROWNING  AS  A  PHILOSOPHICAL  AND  RELIGIOUS 
TEACHER.  Professor  Henry  Jones. 

LIFE  OF  TOLSTOY.  Charles  Sarolea. 

PARIS  TO  NEW  YORK  BY  LAND.  Harry  de  Windt. 
LIFE  OF  LEWIS  CARROLL.  Stuart  Dodgson  Collingwood. 
A  NATURALIST  IN  THE  GUIANAS.  Engine  Andri. 
THE  MANTLE  OF  THE  EAST.  Edmund  Candler. 

LETTERS  OF  DR.  JOHN  BROWN. 

JUBILEE  BOOK  OF  CRICKET.  Prince  Ranjitsinhji. 

BY  DESERT  WAYS  TO  BAGHDAD.  Louisa  Jebb. 

SOME  OLD  LOVE  STORIES.  T.  P.  O'Connor. 


Lord  Morley. 
Barry  O'Brien. 
J.  W.  Sherer. 
Booker  Washington. 
H.  Hesketh  Prichard. 
Andrew  Lang. 
Theodore  Roosevelt. 
Dr.  J ohn  Kerr. 
Hilaire  Belloc. 
G.  W.  E.  Russell. 

James  Milne. 
S.  Reynolds  Hole. 
Charles  Brookfield. 
Thomas  Holmes. 
Richard  Jefferies. 
S ir  Squire  Bancroft. 

Lady  Bell. 
Mrs.  Alec  Twee  die. 


Etc..,  etc. 


Others  to  Jollow, 


■  '  ■ - - -  — 

Fields,  Factories 


and 


Workshops 


OR 


INDUSTRY  COMBINED  WITH  AGRICULTURE 
AND  BRAIN  WORK  WITH  MANUAL  WORK 


BY 

P.  KROPOTKIN 


NEW,  REVISED,  AND  ENLARGED  EDITION 


THOMAS  NELSON  &  SONS 

LONDON,  EDINBURGH,  DUBLIN 
AND  NEW  YORK 


3/^WO 

HDS'V 

.<15. 


60 STD N  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 
CHESTNUT  HILL,  MASS. 


O’NEILL  LIBRARY 

BOSTON  COLLEGE 


PREFACE. 


Fourteen  years  have  passed  since  the  first  edition  of 
this  book  was  published,  and  in  revising  it  for  this  new 
edition  I  found  at  my  disposal  an  immense  mass  of  new 
materials,  statistical  and  descriptive,  and  a  great  num¬ 
ber  of  new  works  dealing  with  the  different  subjects 
that  are  treated  in  this  book.  I  have  thus  had  an 
excellent  opportunity  to  verify  how  far  the  previsions 
that  I  had  formulated  when  I  first  wrote  this  book 
have  been  confirmed  by  the  subsequent  economical 
evolution  of  the  different  nations. 

This  verification  permits  me  to  affirm  that  the 
economical  tendencies  that  I  had  ventured  to  fore¬ 
shadow  then  have  only  become  more  and  more  definite 
since.  Everywhere  we  see  the  same  decentralisation 
of  industries  going  on,  new  nations  continually 
entering  the  ranks  of  those  which  manufacture  for  the 
world  market.  Each  of  these  new-comers  endeavours 
to  develop,  and  succeeds  in  developing,  on  its  own 
territory  the  principal  industries,  and  thus  frees  itself 
from  being  exploited  by  other  nations,  more  advanced 
in  their  technical  evolution.  All  nations  have  made  a 
remarkable  progress  in  this  direction,  as  will  be  seen 
from  the  new  data  that  are  given  in  this  book. 

On  the  other  hand,  one  sees,  with  all  the  great 
industrial  nations,  the  growing  tendency  and  need  of 


vi  PREFACE. 

developing  at  home  a  more  intensive  agricultural  pro¬ 
ductivity,  either  by  improving  the  now  existing 
methods  of  extensive  agriculture,  by  means  of  small 
holdings,  “inner  colonisation,”  agricultural  education,' 
and  co-operative  work,  or  by  introducing  different  new 
branches  of  intensive  agriculture.  This  country  is 
especially  offering  us  at  this  moment  a  most  instructive 
example  of  a  movement  in  the  said  direction.  And 
this  movement  will  certainly  result,  not  only  in  a 
much-needed  increase  of  the  productive  forces  of  the 
nation,  which  will  contribute  to  free  it  from  the  inter¬ 
national  speculators  in  food  produce,  but  also  in 
awakening  in  the  nation  a  fuller  appreciation  of  the 
immense  value  of  its  soil,  and  the  desire  of  repairing 
the  error  that  has  been  committed  in  leaving  it  in  the 
hands  of  great  land-owners  and  of  those  who  find  it  now 
more  advantageous  to  rent  the  land  to  be  turned  into 
shooting  preserves.  The  different  steps  that  are 
being  taken  now  for  raising  English  agriculture  and 
for  obtaining  from  the  land  a  much  greater  amount  of 
produce  are  briefly  indicated  in  Chapter  V. 

It  is  especially  in  revising  the  chapters  dealing  with 
the  small  industries  that  I  had  to  incorporate  the 
results  of  a  great  number  of  new  researches.  In  so 
doing  I  was  enabled  to  show  that  the  growth  of  an 
infinite  variety  of  small  enterprises  by  the  side  of  the 
very  great  centralised  concerns  is  not  showing  any 
signs  of  abatement.  On  the  contrary,  the  distribution 
of  electrical  motive  power  has  given  them  a  new 
impulse.  In  those  places  where  water  power  was 
utilised  for  distributing  electric  power  in  the  villages, 
and  in  those  cities  where  the  machinery  used  for  pro¬ 
ducing  electric  light  during  the  night  hours  was  utilised 
for  supplying  motive  power  during  the  day,  the  small 
industries  are  taking  a  new  development. 


PREFACE.  vii 

In  this  domain  I  am  enabled  to  add  to  the  present 
edition  the  interesting  results  of  a  work  about  the 
small  industries  in  the  United  Kingdom  that  I  made 
in  1900.  Such  a  work  was  only  possible  when  the 
British  Factory  Inspectors  had  published  (in  1898,  in 
virtue  of  the  Factories  Act  of  1895)  their  first  reports, 
from  which  I  could  determine  the  hitherto  unknown 
numerical  relations  between  the  great  and  the  small 
industries  in  the  United  Kingdom. 

Until  then  no  figures  whatever  as  regards  the  dis¬ 
tribution  of  operatives  in  the  large  and  small  factories 
and  workshops  of  Great  Britain  were  available  ;  so 
that  when  economists  spoke  of  the  “  unavoidable  ” 
death  of  the  small  industries  they  merely  expressed 
hypotheses  based  upon  a  limited  number  of  observa¬ 
tions,  which  were  chiefly  made  upon  part  of  the  textile 
industry  and  metallurgy.  Only  after  Mr.  Whitelegge 
had  published  the  first  figures  from  which  reliable 
conclusions  could  be  drawn  was  it  possible  to  see 
how  little  such  wide-reaching  conclusions  were  con¬ 
firmed  by  realities.  In  this  country,  as  everywhere, 
the  small  industries  continue  to  exist,  and  new  ones 
continue  to  appear  as  a  necessary  growth,  in  many 
important  branches  of  national  production,  by  the 
side  of  the  very  great  factories  and  huge  centralised 
works.  So  I  add  to  the  chapter  on  small  industries 
a  summary  of  the  work  that  I  had  published  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century  upon  this  subject. 

As  regards  France,  the  most  interesting  observations 
made  by  M.  Ardouin  Dumazet  during  his  many  years’ 
travels  all  over  the  country  give  me  the  possibility 
of  showing  the  remarkable  development  of  rural 
industries,  and  the  advantages  which  were  taken 
from  them  for  recent  developments  in  agriculture 
and  horticulture.  Besides,  the  publication  of  the 


viii  PREFACE. 

statistical  results  of  the  French  industrial  census  of 
1896  permits  me  to  give  now,  for  France,  most  re¬ 
markable  numerical  data,  showing  the  real  relative 
importance  of  the  great  and  the  small  industries. 

And  finally,  the  recent  publication  of  the  results  of 
the  third  industrial  census  made  in  Germany  in  1907 
gives  me  the  data  for  showing  how  the  German  small 
industries  have  been  keeping  their  ground  for  the  last 
twenty-five  years — a  subject  which  I  could  touch  only 
in  a  general  way  in  the  first  editions.  The  results  of 
this  census,  compared  with  the  two  preceding  ones, 
as  also  some  of  the  conclusions  arrived  at  by  com¬ 
petent  German  writers,  are  indicated  in  the  Appendix. 
So  also  the  results  recently  arrived  at  in  Switzerland 
concerning  its  home  industries. 

As  to  the  need,  generally  felt  at  this  moment,  of  an 
education  which  would  combine  a  wide  scientific  instruc¬ 
tion  with  a  sound  knowledge  of  manual  work — a 
question  which  I  treat  in  the  last  chapter — it  can  be 
said  that  this  cause  has  already  been  won  in  this 
country  during  the  last  twenty  years.  The  principle 
is  generally  recognised  by  this  time,  although  most 
nations,  impoverished  as  they  are  by  their  armaments, 
are  much  too  slow  in  applying  the  principle  in  life. 

P.  Kropotkin. 

Brighton,  October ,  1912. 


PREFACE  TO  FIRST  EDITION. 


-  +»  - 

Under  the  name  of  profits,  rent,  interest  upon  capital, 
surplus  value,  and  the  like,  economists  have  eagerly 
discussed  the  benefits  which  the  owners  of  land  or 
capital,  or  some  privileged  nations,  can  derive,  either 
from  the  under-paid  work  of  the  wage-labourer,  or 
from  the  inferior  position  of  one  class  of  the  com¬ 
munity  towards  another  class,  or  from  the  inferior 
economical  development  of  one  nation  towards  another 
nation.  These  profits  being  shared  in  a  very  unequal 
proportion  between  the  different  individuals,  classes 
and  nations  engaged  in  production,  considerable  pains 
were  taken  to  study  the  present  apportionment  of  the 
benefits,  and  its  economical  and  moral  consequences,  as 
well  as  the  changes  in  the  present  economical  organisa¬ 
tion  of  society  which  might  bring  about  a  more  equitable 
distribution  of  a  rapidly  accumulating  wealth.  It  is 
upon  questions  relating  to  the  right  to  that  increment 
of  wealth  that  the  hottest  battles  are  now  fought 
between  economists  of  different  schools. 

In  the  meantime  the  great  question — “  What  have 
we  to  produce,  and  how  ?  ”  necessarily  remained  in  the 
background.  Political  economy,  as  it  gradually  emerges 
from  its  semi-scientific  stage,  tends  more  and  more  to 
become  a  science  devoted  to  the  study  of  the  needs  of 
men  and  of  the  means  of  satisfying  them  with  the 
least  possible  waste  of  energy, — that  is,  a  sort  of 
physiology  of  society.  But  few  economists,  as  yet, 


X 


PREFACE  TO  FIRST  EDITION. 

have  recognised  that  this  is  the  proper  domain  of 
economics,  and  have  attempted  to  treat  their  science 
from  this  point  of  view.  The  main  subject  of  social 
economy — that  is,  the  economy  of  energy  required  for  the 
satisfaction  of  human  needs — is  consequently  the  last 
subject  which  one  expects  to  find  treated  in  a  concrete 
form  in  economical  treatises. 

The  following  pages  are  a  contribution  to  a  portion 
of  this  vast  subject.  They  contain  a  discussion  of  the 
advantages  which  civilised  societies  could  derive 
from  a  combination  of  industrial  pursuits  with  in¬ 
tensive  agriculture,  and  of  brain  work  with  manual 
work. 

The  importance  of  such  a  combination  has  not 
escaped  the  attention  of  a  number  of  students  of 
social  science.  It  was  eagerly  discussed  some  fifty 
years  ago  under  the  names  of  “  harmonised  labour,” 
“  integral  education,”  and  so  on.  It  was  pointed  out 
at  that  time  that  the  greatest  sum  total  of  well-being 
can  be  obtained  when  a  variety  of  agricultural,  in¬ 
dustrial  and  intellectual  pursuits  are  combined  in  each 
community  ;  and  that  man  shows  his  best  when  he  is 
in  a  position  to  apply  his  usually-varied  capacities 
to  several  pursuits  in  the  farm,  the  workshop,  the 
factory,  the  study  or  the  studio,  instead  of  being 
riveted  for  life  to  one  of  these  pursuits  only. 

At  a  much  more  recent  date,  in  the  ’seventies, 
Herbert  Spencer’s  theory  of  evolution  gave  origin  in 
Russia  to  a  remarkable  work,  The  Theory  of  Progress, 
by  M.  M.  Mikhailovsky.  The  part  which  belongs  in 
progressive  evolution  to  differentiation,  and  the  part 
which  belongs  in  it  to  an  integration  of  aptitudes  and 
activities,  were  discussed  by  the  Russian  author  with 
depth  of  thought,  and  Spencer’s  differentiation-formula 
was  accordingly  completed. 


PREFACE  TO  FIRST  EDITION.  xi 

And,  finally,  out  of  a  number  of  smaller  mono¬ 
graphs,  I  must  mention  a  suggestive  little  book  by 
J.  R.  Dodge,  the  United  States  statistician  ( Farm  and 
Factory  :  Aids  derived  by  Agriculture  from  Industries, 
New  York,  1886).  The  same  question  was  discussed  in 
it  from  a  practical  American  point  of  view. 

Half  a  century  ago  a  harmonious  union  between 
agricultural  and  industrial  pursuits,  as  also  between 
brain  work  and  manual  work,  could  only  be  a  remote 
desideratum.  The  conditions  under  which  the  factory 
system  asserted  itself,  as  well  as  the  obsolete  forms 
of  agriculture  which  prevailed  at  that  time,  prevented 
such  a  union  from  being  feasible.  Synthetic  pro¬ 
duction  was  impossible.  However,  the  wonderful  sim¬ 
plification  of  the  technical  processes  in  both  industry 
and  agriculture,  partly  due  to  an  ever-increasing  division 
of  labour — in  analogy  with  what  we  see  in  biology — 
has  rendered  the  synthesis  possible  ;  and  a  distinct 
tendency  towards  a  synthesis  of  human  activities  be¬ 
comes  now  apparent  in  modern  economical  evolution. 
This  tendency  is  analysed  in  the  subsequent  chapters — 
a  special  weight  being  laid  upon  the  present  possibilities 
of  agriculture,  which  are  illustrated  by  a  number  of 
examples  borrowed  from  different  countries,  and  upon 
the  small  industries  to  which  a  new  impetus  is  being 
given  by  the  new  methods  of  transmission  of  motive 
power. 

The  substance  of  these  essays  was  published  in 
1888^-1890  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  and  of  one  of 
them  in  the  Forum.  However,  the  tendencies  indicated 
therein  have  been  confirmed  during  the  last  ten  years 
by  such  a  mass  of  evidence  that  a  very  considerable 
amount  of  new  matter  had  to  be  introduced,  while 
the  chapters  on  agriculture  and  the  small  trades  had 
to  be  written  anew. 


xii  PREFACE  TO  FIRST  EDITION. 

I  take  advantage  of  this  opportunity  to  address 
my  best  thanks  to  the  editors  of  the  Nineteenth  Century 
and  the  Forum  for  their  kind  permission  of  repro¬ 
ducing  these  essays  in  a  new  form,  as  also  to  those 
friends  and  correspondents  who  have  aided  me  in 
collecting  information  about  agriculture  and  the 
petty  trades. 

P.  Kropotkin. 

Bromley,  Kent,  1898. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Chapter  I.  The  Decentralisation  of  In¬ 
dustries  •  •  •  •  .  •  •  iy 

Division  of  labour  and  integration — The  spread  of  in¬ 
dustrial  skill  —  Each  nation  its  own  producer  of 
manufactured  goods — The  United  Kingdom — France 
— Germany — Russia — “  German  Competition.” 

Chapter  II.  The  Decentralisation  of  In¬ 
dustries  {( continued ) . 50 

Italy  and  Spain — India — Japan — The  United  States — 

The  cotton,  woollen,  and  silk  trades — The  growing 
necessity  for  each  country  to  rely  chiefly  upon 
home  consumers. 

Chapter  III.  The  Possibilities  of  Agri¬ 
culture  . 79 

The  development  of  agriculture — The  over-population 
prejudice— Can  the  soil  of  Great  Britain  feed  its 
inhabitants? — British  agriculture — Compared  with 
agriculture  in  France  ;  in  Belgium ;  in  Denmark — 
Market-gardening  :  its  achievements — Is  it  profitable 
to  grow  wheat  in  Great  Britain  ? — American  agri¬ 
culture  :  intensive  culture  in  the  States. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Chapter  IV.  The  Possibilities  of  Agri¬ 
culture  {continued) . 158 

The  doctrine  of  Malthus — Progress  in  wheat-growing — 

East  Flanders — Channel  Islands — Potato  crops,  past 
and  present  —  Irrigation  —  Major  Hallett’s  experi¬ 
ments — Planted  wheat. 

Chapter  V.  The  Possibilities  of  Agri¬ 
culture  {continued)  .....  188 

Extension  of  market-gardening  and  fruit-growing  :  in 
France ;  in  the  United  States — Culture  under  glass 
— Kitchen  gardens  under  glass — Hothouse  culture  : 
in  Guernsey  and  Jersey  ;  in  Belgium — Conclusion. 

Chapter  VI.  Small  Industries  and  Indus¬ 
trial  Villages . 241 

Industry  and  agriculture — The  sinall  industries — Differ¬ 
ent  types — Petty  trades  in  Great  Britain :  Sheffield, 

Leeds,  Lake  District,  Birmingham— Statistical  data 
— Petty  trades  in  France :  weaving  and  various 
other  trades — The  Lyons  region — Paris,  emporium 
of  petty  trades — Results  of  the  census  of  1896. 

Chapter  VII.  Small  Industries  and  Indus* 

trial  Villages  {continued) .  .  .  .  325 

Petty  trades  in  Germany :  discussions  upon  the  subject 
and  conclusions  arrived  at — Results  of  the  census 
taken  in  1882, 1895,  and  1907 — Petty  trades  in  Russia 
— Conclusions. 

Chapter  VIII.  Brain  Work  and  Manual 

Work . 363 

Divorce  between  science  and  handicraft — Technical  edu¬ 
cation— Complete  education — The  Moscow  system ; 
applied  at  Chicago,  Boston,  Aberdeen — Concrete 
teaching  —  Present  waste  of  time  —  Science  and 
technics  —  Advantages  which  science  can  derive 
from  a  combination  of  brain  work  with  manual  work. 

Chapter  IX.  Conclusion . 410 


CONTENTS. 

A. 

APPENDIX. 

British  Investments  Abroad  . 

•  • 

PAGE 

421 

B. 

French  Imports  .... 

•  • 

422 

C. 

Growth  of  Industry  in  Russia 

•  • 

423 

D. 

Iron  Industry  in  Germany 

•  • 

423 

E. 

Machinery  in  Germany  . 

•  • 

424 

F. 

Cotton  Industry  in  Germany  . 

•  • 

425 

G. 

Mining  and  Textiles  in  Austria  . 

427 

H. 

Cotton  Manufacture  in  India 

•  • 

428 

I. 

The  Cotton  Industry  in  the 
States  . 

United 

•  • 

430 

J. 

Mr.  Giffen’s  and  Mr.  Flux’s  Figures 

CONCERNING  THE  POSITION  OF  THE 

United  Kingdom  in  International 

'Frade  ....... 

432 

K. 

Market-Gardening  in  Belgium 

•  • 

434 

L. 

The  Channel  Islands — The  Scilly  Islands 

435 

M. 

Irrigated  Meadows  in  Italy  . 

•  • 

444 

N. 

Planted  Wheat;  the  Rothamsted  Chal- 

LENGE  ••••••• 

444 

0. 

Replanted  Wheat 

•  • 

445 

P. 

Imports  of  Vegetables  to  the 
Kingdom  . 

United 

•  • 

447 

Q. 

Fruit  Culture  in  Belgium 

•  • 

449 

CONTENTS. 


R.  Culture  under  Glass  in  Holland  . 

S.  Prices  obtained  in  London  for  Dessert 

Grapes  cultivated  under  Glass 

T.  The  Use  of  Electricity  in  Agriculture 

U.  Petty  Trades  in  the  Lyons  Region 

V.  Small  Industries  at  Paris 

W.  Results  of  the  Census  of  the  French 

Industries  in  1896 . 

X.  The  Small  Industries  in  Germany 

Y.  The  Domestic  Industries  in  Switzerland 


PAGE 

450 

451 

452 

454 

460 

462 

468 

475 


\ 


FIELDS,  FACTORIES,  AND 
WORKSHOPS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  DECENTRALISATION  OF  INDUSTRIES. 


Division  of  labour  and  integration — The  spread  of  industrial 
skill — Each  nation  its  own  producer  of  manufactured  goods 
— The  United  Kingdom — France — Germany — Russia — 
“  German  competition.” 

WHO  does  not  remember  the  remarkable 

chapter  by  which  Adam  Smith  opens  his 

inquiry  into  the  nature  and  causes  of  the  wealth 

of  nations  ?  Even  those  of  our  contemporary 

economists  who  seldom  revert  to  the  works 

of  the  father  of  political  economy,  and  often 

forget  the  ideas  which  inspired  them,  know 

that  chapter  almost  by  heart,  so  often  has  it 

been  copied  and  recopied  since.  It  has  become 

an  article  of  faith  ;  and  the  economical  history 

of  the  century  which  has  elapsed  since  Adam 

Smith  wrote  has  been,  so  to  speak,  an  actual 

commentary  upon  it. 

82 


18 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


“  Division  of  labour  ”  was  its  watchword. 
And  the  division  and  subdivision — the  per¬ 
manent  subdivision — of  functions  has  been 
pushed  so  far  as  to  divide  humanity  into  castes 
which  are  almost  as  firmly  established  as  those 
of  old  India.  We  have,  first,  the  broad  division 
into  producers  and  consumers  :  little-consuming 
producers  on  the  one  hand,  little-producing 
consumers  on  the  other  hand.  Then,  amidst  the 
former,  a  series  of  further  subdivisions  :  the 
manual  worker  and  the  intellectual  worker, 
sharply  separated  from  one  another  to  the 
detriment  of  both  ;  the  agricultural  labourers 
and  the  workers  in  the  manufacture  ;  and, 
amidst  the  mass  of  the  latter,  numberless  sub¬ 
divisions  again — so  minute,  indeed,  that  the 
modern  ideal  of  a  workman  seems  to  be  a  man  or 
a  woman,  or  even  a  girl  or  a  boy,  without  the 
knowledge  of  any  handicraft,  without  any  con¬ 
ception  whatever  of  the  industry  he  or  she  is 
employed  in,  who  is  only  capable  of  making 
all  day  long  and  for  a  whole  life  the  same  infini¬ 
tesimal  part  of  something  :  who  from  the  age  of 
thirteen  to  that  of  sixty  pushes  the  coal  cart  at 
a  given  spot  of  the  mine  or  makes  the  spring 
of  a  penknife,  or  “  the  eighteenth  part  of  a  pin.” 
Mere  servants  to  some  machine  of  a  given  de¬ 
scription  ;  mere  flesh-and-bone  parts  of  some 
V  immense  machinery  ;  having  no  idea  how  and 


OF  INDUSTRIES.  19 

why  the  machinery  performs  its  rhythmical 
movements. 

Skilled  artisanship  is  being  swept  away  as  a 
survival  of  a  past  condemned  to  disappear.  The 
artist  who  formerly  found  aesthetic  enjoyment 
in  the  work  of  his  hands  is  substituted  by  the 
human  slave  of  an  iron  slave.  Nay,  even  the 
agricultural  labourer,  who  formerly  used  to  find 
a  relief  from  the  hardships  of  his  life  in  the  home 
of  his  ancestors — the  future  home  of  his  chil¬ 
dren — in  his  love  of  the  field  and  in  a  keen  inter¬ 
course  with  nature,  even  he  has  been  doomed 
to  disappear  for  the  sake  of*  division  of  labour. 
He  is  an  anachronism,  we  are  told  ;  he  must  be 
substituted,  in  a  Bonanza  farm,  by  an  occa¬ 
sional  servant  hired  for  the  summer,  and  dis¬ 
charged  as  the  autumn  comes  :  a  tramp  who  will 
never  again  see  the  field  he  has  harvested  once 
in  his  fife.  “  An  affair  of  a  few  years,”  the 
economists  say,  “  to  reform  agriculture  in 
accordance  with  the  true  principles  of  division 
of  labour  and  modern  industrial  organisation.” 

Dazzled  with  the  results  obtained  by  a  century 
of  marvellous  inventions,  especially  in  England, 
our  economists  and  political  men  went  still 
farther  in  their  dreams  of  division  of  labour. 
They  proclaimed  the  necessity  of  dividing  the 
whole  of  humanity  into  national  workshops 
having  each  of  them  its  own  speciality.  We 


20 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


were  taught,  for  instance,  that  Hungary  and 
Russia  are  predestined  by  nature  to  grow 
corn  in  order  to  feed  the  manufacturing  coun¬ 
tries  ;  that  Britain  had  to  provide  the  world- 
market  with  cottons,  iron  goods,  and  coal ; 
Belgium  with  woollen  cloth  ;  and  so  on.  Nay, 
within  each  nation,  each  region  had  to  have  its 
own  speciality.  So  it  has  been  for  some  time 
since  ;  so  it  ought  to  remain.  Fortunes  have 
been  made  in  this  way,  and  will  continue  to  be 
made  in  the  same  way.  It  being  proclaimed  that 
the  wealth  of  nations  is  measured  by  the  amount 
vy6f  profits  made  by  the  few,  and  that  the  largest 
profits  are  made  by  means  of  a  specialisation  of 
labour,  the  question  was  not  conceived  to  exist 
as  to  whether  human  beings  would  always  sub¬ 
mit  to  such  a  specialisation  ;  whether  nations 
could  be  specialised  like  isolated  workmen. 
The  theory  was  good  for  to-day — why  should 
we  care  for  to-morrow  ?  To-morrow  might  bring 
its  own  theory  ! 

And  so  it  did.  The  narrow  conception  of  life 
which  consisted  in  thinking  that  'profits  are  the 
only  leading  motive  of  human  society,  and 
the  stubborn  view  which  supposes  that  what 
has  existed  yesterday  would  last  for  ever, 
proved  in  disaccordance  with  the  tendencies 
of  human  life  ;  and  life  took  another  direction. 
/Nobody  will  deny  the  high  pitch  of  production 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


21 


which  may  be  attained  by  specialisation.  But*/ 
precisely  in  proportion  as  the  work  required  from 
the  individual  in  modern  production  becomes 
simpler  and  easier  to  be  learned,  and,  therefore, 
also  more  monotonous  and  wearisome — the 
requirements  of  the  individual  for  varying  his 
work, for  exercising  all  his  capacities,  become  more 
and  more  prominent.  Humanity  perceives  that 
there  is  no  advantage  for  the  community  in 
riveting  a  human  being  for  all  his  life  to  a 
given  spot,  in  a  workshop  or  a  mine  ;  no  gain  in 
depriving  him  of  such  work  as  would  bring  him 
into  free  intercourse  with  nature,  make  of  him  a 
conscious  part  of  the  grand  whole,  a  partner  in 
the  highest  enjoyments  of  science  and  art,  of 
free  work  and  creation. 

Nations,  too,  refuse  to  be  specialised.  Each 
nation  is  a  compound  aggregate  of  tastes  and 
inclinations,  of  wants  and  resources,  of  capacities 
and  inventive  powers.  The  territory  occupied 
by  each  nation  is  in  its  turn  a  most  varied  texture 
of  soils  and  climates,  of  hills  and  valleys,  of  slopes 
leading  to  a  still  greater  variety  of  territories  and 
races.  Variety  is  the  distinctive  feature,  both  / 
of  the  territory  and  its  inhabitants  ;  and  that 
variety  implies  a  variety  of  occupations.  Agri¬ 
culture  calls  manufactures  into  existence,  and 
manufactures  support  agriculture.  Both  are 
inseparable  ;  and  the  combination,  the  integra- 


22 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


tion  of  both  brings  about  the  grandest  results. 
In  proportion  as  technical  knowledge  becomes 
everybody’s  virtual  domain,  in  proportion  as  it 
becomes  international,  and  can  be  concealed 
no  longer,  each  nation  acquires  the  possibility 
of  applying  the  whole  variety  of  her  energies 
to  the  whole  variety  of  industrial  and  agricul¬ 
tural  pursuits.  Knowledge  ignores  artificial 
political  boundaries.  So  also  do  the  industries  ; 
and  the  present  tendency  of  humanity  is  to  have 
the  greatest  possible  variety  of  industries 
gathered  in  each  country,  in  each  separate  region, 
side  by  side  with  agriculture.  The  needs  of 
human  agglomerations  correspond  thus  to  the 
needs  of  the  individual ;  and  while  a  temporary 
'v/c!ivision  of  functions  remains  the  surest  guarantee 
of  success  in  each  separate  undertaking,  the 
permanent  division  is  doomed  to  disappear,  and 
to  be  substituted  by  a  variety  of  pursuits — 
intellectual,  industrial,  and  agricultural — cor¬ 
responding  to  the  different  capacities  of  the 
individual,  as  well  as  to  the  variety  of  capacities 
within  every  human  aggregate. 

When  we  thus  revert  from  the  scholastics  of 
our  text-books,  and  examine  human  fife  as  a 
whole,  we  soon  discover  that,  while  all  the 
benefits  of  a  temporary  division  of  labour  must 
be  maintained,  it  is  high  time  to  claim  those  of 
the  integration  of  labour .  Political  economy 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


23 


has  hitherto  insisted  chiefly  upon  division.  We 
proclaim  integration  ;  and  we  maintain  that  the 
ideal  of  sopiety — that  is,  the  state  towards 
which  society  is  already  marching — is  a  society 
of  integrated,  combined  labour.  A  society  where 
each  individual  is  a  producer  of  both  manual 
and  intellectual  work  ;  where  each  able-bodied 
human  being  is  a  worker,  and  where  each 
worker  works  both  in  the  field  and  the  industrial 
workshop  ;  where  every  aggregation  of  indivi¬ 
duals,  large  enough  to  dispose  of  a  certain  variety 
of  natural  resources — it  may  be  a  nation,  or  rather 
a  region — produces  and  itself  consumes  most  of 
its  own  agricultural  and  manufactured  produce. 

Of  course,  as  long  as  society  remains  organised 
so  as  to  permit  the  owners  of  the  land  and  capital 
to  appropriate  for  themselves,  under  the  pro¬ 
tection  of  the  State  and  historical  rights,  the 
yearly  surplus  of  human  production,  no  such 
change  can  be  thoroughly  accomplished.  But 
the  present  industrial  system,  based  upon  a 
permanent  specialisation  of  functions,  already 
bears  in  itself  the  germs  of  its  proper  ruin.  The 
industrial  crises,  which  grow  more  acute  and  pro¬ 
tracted,  and  are  rendered  still  worse  and  still 
more  acute  by  the  armaments  and  wars  implied 
by  the  present  system,  are  rendering  its  main¬ 
tenance  more  and  more  difficult.  Moreover, 
the  workers  plainly  manifest  their  intention  to 


24 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


support  no  longer  patiently  the  misery  occasioned 
by  each  crisis.  And  each  crisis  accelerates 
the  day  when  the  present  institutions  of  indivi¬ 
dual  property  and  production  will  be  shaken  to 
their  foundations  with  such  internal  struggles 
^s  will  depend  upon  the  more  or  less  good  sense 
of  the  now  privileged  classes. 

But  we  maintain  also  that  any  socialist  attempt 
at  remodelling  the  present  relations  between 
Capital  and  Labour  will  be  a  failure,  if  it  does  not 
/  take  into  account  the  above  tendencies  towards 
integration.  These  tendencies  have  not  yet 
received,  in  our  opinion,  due  attention  from 
the  different  socialist  schools — but  they  must. 
J  A  reorganised  society  will  have  to  abandon  the 
fallacy  of  nations  specialised  for  the  production 
of  either  agricultural  or  manufactured  produce. 
It  will  have  to  rely  on  itself  for  the  production 
of  food  and  many,  if  not  most,  of  the  raw 
materials  ;  it  must  find  the  best  means  of  com¬ 
bining  agriculture  with  manufacture — the  work 
in  the  field  with  a  decentralised  industry  ;  and  it 
will  have  to  provide  for  “  integrated  education,” 
which  education  alone,  by  teaching  both  science 
and  handicraft  from  earliest  childhood,  can  give 
to  society  the  men  and  women  it  really  needs. 

Each  nation  —  her  own  agriculturist  and 
manufacturer  ;  each  individual  working  in  the 
field  and  in  some  industrial  art ;  each  individual 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


25 


combining  scientific  knowledge  with  the  know¬ 
ledge  of  a  handicraft — such  is,  we  affirm,  the 
present  tendency  of  civilised  nations. 

0 

The  prodigious  growth  of  industries  in  Great  / 
Britain,  and  the  simultaneous  development  of  the  j 
international  traffic  which  now  permits  the  trans-  \ 
port  of  raw  materials  and  articles  of  food  on  a  ^ 
gigantic  scale,  have  created  the  impression  that 
a  few  nations  of  West  Europe  were  destined  to 
become  the  manufacturers  of  the  world.  They 
need  only — it  was  argued — to  supply  the  market 
with  manufactured  goods,  and  they  will  draw 
from  all  over  the  surface  of  the  earth  the  food 
they  cannot  grow  themselves,  as  well  as  the  raw 
materials  they  need  for  their  manufactures.  The 
steadily  increasing  speed  of  trans-oceanic  com¬ 
munications  and  the  steadily  increasing  facili¬ 
ties  of  shipping  have  contributed  to  enforce 
the  above  impression.  If  we  take  the  enthu¬ 
siastic  pictures  of  international  traffic,  drawn 
in  such  a  masterly  way  by  Neumann  Spallart — 
the  statistician  and  almost  the  poet  of  the 
world-trade — we  are  inclined  indeed  to  fall 
into  ecstasy  before  the  results  achieved.  “  Why 
shall  we  grow  corn,  rear  oxen  and  sheep,  and 
cultivate  orchards,  go  through  the  painful 
work  of  the  labourer  and  the  farmer,  and 
anxiously  watch  the  sky  in  fear  of  a  bad  crop, 


26 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


when  we  can  get,  with  much  less  pain,  moun¬ 
tains  of  corn  from  India,  America,  Hungary,  or 
Russia,  meat  from  New  Zealand,  vegetables 
from  the  Azores,  apples  from  Canada,  grapes 
from  Malaga,  and  so  on  ?  ”  exclaim  the  West 
Europeans.  “  Already  now,”  they  say,  “  our 
food  consists,  even  in  modest  households,  of 
produce  gathered  from  all  over  the  globe.  Our 
cloth  is  made  out  of  fibres  grown  and  wool 
sheared  in  all  parts  of  the  world.  The  prairies 
of  America  and  Australia  ;  the  mountains  and 
steppes  of  Asia  ;  the  frozen  wildernesses  of  the 
Arctic  regions  ;  the  deserts  of  Africa  and  the 
depths  of  the  oceans  ;  the  tropics  and  the  lands 
of  the  midnight  sun  are  our  tributaries.  All  races 
of  men  contribute  their  share  in  supplying  us 
with  our  staple  food  and  luxuries,  with  plain 
clothing  and  fancy  dress,  while  we  are  sending 
them  in  exchange  the  produce  of  our  higher  in¬ 
telligence,  our  technical  knowledge,  our  powerful 
industrial  and  commercial  organising  capacities  ! 
Is  it  not  a  grand  sight,  this  busy  and  intricate 
exchange  of  produce  all  over  the  earth  which 
has  suddenly  grown  up  within  a  few  years  ?  ” 

Grand  it  may  be,  but  is  it  not  a  mere  night¬ 
mare  ?  Is  it  necessary  ?  At  what  cost  has  it 
been  obtained,  and  how  long  will  it  last  ? 

Let  us  turn  a  hundred  years  back.  France 
lay  bleeding  at  the  end  of  the  Napoleonic  wars. 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


27 


Her  young  industry,  which  had  begun  to  grow 
by  the  end  of  the  18th  century,  was  crushed 
down.  Germany,  Italy  were  powerless  in  the 
industrial  field.  The  armies  of  the  great  Republic 
had  struck  a  mortal  blow  to  serfdom  on  the 
Continent ;  but  with  the  return  of  reaction 
efforts  were  made  to  revive  the  decaying  insti¬ 
tution,  and  serfdom  meant  no  industry  worth 
speaking  of.  The  terrible  wars  between  France 
and  England,  which  wars  are  often  explained 
by  merely  political  causes,  had  a  much  deeper 
meaning — an  economical  meaning.  They  were 
wars  for  the  supremacy  on  the  world  market, 
wars  against  French  industry  and  commerce, 
supported  by  a  strong  navy  which  France  had 
begun  to  build — and  Britain  won  the  battle.  She 
became  supreme  on  the  seas.  Bordeaux  was  no 
more  a  rival  to  London  ;  as  to  the  French  indus¬ 
tries,  they  seemed  to  be  killed  in  the  bud.  And, 
aided  by  the  powerful  impulse  given  to  natural 
sciences  and  technology  by  a  great  era  of  inven¬ 
tions,  finding  no  serious  competitors  in  Europe, 
Britain  began  to  develop  her  manufactures. 
To  produce  on  a  large  scale  in  immense  quan¬ 
tities  became  the  watchword.  The  necessary 
human  forces  were  at  hand  in  the  peasantry, 
partly  driven  by  force  from  the  land,  partly 
attracted  to  the  cities  by  high  wages.  The 
necessary  machinery  was  created,  and  the 


28  THE  DECENTRALISATION 

British  production  of  manufactured  goods  went 
on  at  a  gigantic  pace.  In  the  course  of  less 
than  seventy  years — from  1810  to  1878 — the 
output  of  coal  grew  from  10  to  133,000,000 
tons  ;  the  imports  of  raw  materials  rose  from 
30  to  380,000,000  tons  ;  and  the  exports  of 
manufactured  goods  from  46  to  200,000,000 
pounds.  The  tonnage  of  the  commercial  fleet 
was  nearly  trebled.  Fifteen  thousand  miles  of 
railways  were  built. 

£>  It  is  useless  to  repeat  now  at  what  a  cost 
the  above  results  were  achieved.  The  terrible 
revelations  of  the  parliamentary  commissions 
of  1840-1842  as  to  the  atrocious  condition  of 
the  manufacturing  classes,  the  tales  of  “  cleared 
estates,”  and  kidnapped  children  are  still 
fresh  in  the  memory.  They  will  remain  standing 
monuments  for  showing  by  what  means  the 
great  industry  was  implanted  in  this  country. 
But  the  accumulation  of  wealth  in  the  hands 
of  the  privileged  classes  was  going  on  at  a  speed 
never  dreamed  of  before.  The  incredible  riches 
which  now  astonish  the  foreigner  in  the  private 
houses  of  England  were  accumulated  during 
that  period  ;  the  exceedingly  expensive  standard 
of  life  which  makes  a  person  considered  rich  on 
the  Continent  appear  as  only  of  modest  means 
in  Britain  was  introduced  during  that  time. 
The  taxed  property  alone  doubled  during  the 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


29 


last  thirty  years  of  the  above  period,  while 
during  the  same  years  (1810  to  1878)  no  less 
than  £1,112,000,000 — nearly  £2,000,000,000  by 
this  time — was  invested  by  English  capitalists 
either  in  foreign  industries  or  in  foreign  loans.* 
But  the  monopoly  of  industrial  production 
could  not  remain  with  England  for  ever.  Neither 
industrial  knowledge  nor  enterprise  could  be 
kept  for  ever  as  a  privilege  of  these  islands. 
Necessarily,  fatally,  they  began  to  cross  the 
Channel  and  spread  over  the  Continent.  The 
Great  Revolution  had  created  in  France  a 
numerous  class  of  peasant  proprietors,  who 
enjoyed  nearly  half  a  century  of  a  comparative 
well-being,  or,  at  least,  of  a  guaranteed  labour. 
The  ranks  of  homeless  town  workers  increased 
slowly.  But  the  middle-class  revolution  of  17  SO¬ 
UQS  had  already  made  a  distinction  between 
the  peasant  householders  and  the  village  pro- 
letaires,  and,  by  favouring  the  former  to  the 
detriment  of  the  latter,  it  compelled  the  labour¬ 
ers  who  had  no  household  nor  land  to  aban¬ 
don  their  villages,  and  thus  to  form  the  first 
nucleus  of  working  classes  given  up  to  the  mercy 
of  manufacturers.  Moreover,  the  peasant-pro¬ 
prietors  themselves,  after  having  enjoyed  a 
period  of  undeniable  prosperity,  began  in  their 
turn  to  feel  the  pressure  of  bad  times,  and  their 

*  See  Appendix  A. 


30 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


children  were  compelled  to  look  for  employment 
in  manufactures.  Wars  and  revolution  had 
checked  the  growth  of  industry  ;  but  it  began 
to  grow  again  during  the  second  half  of  our 
century ;  it  developed,  it  improved ;  and  now, 
notwithstanding  the  loss  of  Alsace,  France  is  no 
longer  the  tributary  to  England  for  manufactured 
produce  which  she  was  sixty  years  ago.  To-day 
her  exports  of  manufactured  goods  are  valued  at 
nearly  one-half  of  those  of  Great  Britain,  and 
two-thirds  of  them  are  textiles  ;  while  her 
imports  of  the  same  consist  chiefly  of  the  finer 
sorts  of  cotton  and  woollen  yarn — partly  re¬ 
exported  as  stuffs — and  a  small  quantity  of 
woollen  goods.  For  her  own  consumption 
France  shows  a  decided  tendency  towards  be¬ 
coming  entirely  a  self-supporting  country,  and 
for  the  sale  of  her  manufactured  goods  she  is 
tending  to  rely,  not  on  her  colonies,  but  especially 
on  her  own  wealthy  home  market.* 

Germany  follows  the  same  lines.  During  the 
last  fifty  years,  and  especially  since  the  last  war, 
her  industry  has  undergone  a  thorough  re¬ 
organisation.  Her  population  having  rapidly 
increased  from  forty  to  sixty  millions,  this 
increment  went  entirely  to  increase  the  urban 
population — without  taking  hands  from  agri¬ 
culture — and  in  the  cities  it  went  to  increase 

* 

*  See  Appendix  B. 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


31 


the  population  engaged  in  industry.  Her  indus¬ 
trial  machinery  has  been  thoroughly  improved, 
and  her  new-born  manufactures  are  supplied 
now  with  a  machinery  which  mostly  represents 
the  last  word  of  technical  progress.  She  has 
plenty  of  workmen  and  technologists  endowed 
with  a  superior  technical  and  scientific  educa¬ 
tion  ;  and  in  an  army  of  learned  chemists, 
physicists  and  engineers  her  industry  has  a  most 
powerful  and  intelligent  aid,  both  for  directly 
improving  it  and  for  spreading  in  the  country 
serious  scientific  and  technical  knowledge.  As 
a  whole,  Germany  offers  now  the  spectacle  of 
a  nation  in  a  period  of  Aufschwung ,  of  a  sud¬ 
den  development,  with  all  the  forces  of  a  new 
start  in  every  domain  of  life.  Fifty  years 
ago  she  was  a  customer  to  England.  Now  she 
is  already  a  competitor  in  the  European  and 
Asiatic  markets,  and  at  the  present  speedy  rate 
of  growth  of  her  industries,  her  competition  will 
soon  be  felt  even  more  acutely  than  it  is  already 
felt. 

At  the  same  time  the  wave  of  industrial  pro¬ 
duction,  after  having  had  its  origin  in  the  north¬ 
west  of  Europe,  spreads  towards  the  east  and 
south-east,  always  covering  a  wider  circle. 
And,  in  proportion  as  it  advances  east,  and 
penetrates  into  younger  countries,  it  implants 
there  all  the  improvements  due  to  a  century  of 


32 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


mechanical  and  chemical  inventions  ;  it  bor¬ 
rows  from  science  all  the  help  that  science  can 
give  to  industry  ;  and  it  finds  populations  eager 
to  grasp  the  last  results  of  modern  knowledge. 
The  new  manufactures  of  Germany  begin 
v/ where  Manchester  arrived  after  a  century  of 
experiments  and  gropings  ;  and  Russia  begins 
where  Manchester  and  Saxony  have  now  reached. 
Russia,  in  her  turn,  tries  to  emancipate  herself 
from  her  dependency  upon  Western  Europe, 
and  rapidly  begins  to  manufacture  all  those 
goods  she  formerly  used  to  import,  either  from 
Britain  or  from  Germany. 

Protective  duties  may,  perhaps,  sometimes 
help  the  birth  of  new  industries  :  always  at  the 
expense  of  some  other  growing  industries,  and 
always  checking  the  improvement  of  those 
which  already  exist  ;  but  the  decentralisation  of 
manufactures  goes  on  with  or  without  pro¬ 
tective  duties — I  should  even  say,  notwith¬ 
standing  the  protective  duties.  Austria,  Hungary 
and  Italy  follow  the  same  lines — they  develop 
their  home  industries — and  even  Spain  and 
Servia  are  going  to  join  the  family  of  manu¬ 
facturing  nations.  Nay,  even  India,  even  Brazil 
and  Mexico,  supported  by  English,  French,  and 
German  capital  and  knowledge,  begin  to  start 
home  industries  on  their  respective  soils.  Fi¬ 
nally,  a  terrible  competitor  to  all  European 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


33 


manufacturing  countries  has  grown  up  of  late  in 
the  United  States.  In  proportion  as  technical 
education  spreads  more  and  more  widely,  manu¬ 
factures  grow  in  the  States  ;  and  they  do  grow 
at  such  a  speed — an  American  speed — that  in  a 
very  few  years  the  now  neutral  markets  will  be 
invaded  by  American  goods.  , 

The  monopoly  of  the  first  comers  on  the 
industrial  field  has  ceased  to  exist.  And  it  will 
exist  no  more,  whatever  may  be  the  spasmodic 
efforts  made  to  return  to  a  state  of  things  already 
belonging  to  the  domain  of  history.  New  ways, 
new  issues  must  be  looked  for  :  the  past  has 
lived,  and  it  will  live  no  more. 

Before  going  farther,  let  me  illustrate  the 
march  of  industries  towards  the  east  by  a  few 
figures.  And,  to  begin  with,  let  me  take  the 
example  of  Russia.  Not  because  I  know  it 
better,  but  because  Russia  is  one  of  the  latest 
comers  on  the  industrial  field.  Fifty  years  ago 
she  was  considered  as  the  ideal  of  an  agricultural 
nation,  doomed  by  nature  itself  to  supply  other 
nations  with  food,  and  to  draw  her  manu¬ 
factured  goods  from  the  west.  So  it  was, 
indeed — but  it  is  so  no  more. 

In  1861 — the  year  of  the  emancipation  of  the 
serfs — Russia  and  Poland  had  only  14,060  manu¬ 
factories,  which  produced  every  year  the  value 


34 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


of  296,000,000  roubles  (about  £36,000,000). 
Twenty  years  later  the  number  of  establishments 
rose  to  35, 160,  and  their  yearly  production  became 
nearly  four  times  the  above,  i.e .,  1,305,000,000 
roubles  (about  £131,000,000)  ;  and  in  1894, 
although  the  census  left  the  smaller  manufac¬ 
tures  and  all  the  industries  which  pay  excise 
duties  (sugar,  spirits,  matches)  out  of  account, 
the  aggregate  production  in  the  Empire  reached 
already  1,759,000,000  roubles,  i.e.,  £180,000,000. 
The  most  noteworthy  feature  of  this  increase 
is,  that  while  the  number  of  workmen  employed 
in  the  manufactures  has  not  even  doubled  since 
1861  (it  attained  1,555,000  in  1894,  and  1,902,750 
in  1910),  the  production  per  workman  has  more 
than  trebled  in  the  leading  industries.  The 
average  was  less  than  £70  per  annum  in  1861  ; 
it  reaches  now  £219.  The  increase  of  production 
is  thus  chiefly  due  to  the  improvement  of 
machinery.* 

If  we  take,  however,  separate  branches,  and 

*  For  the  last  few  years,  since  the  Japanese  war,  the  figures 
were  uncertain.  It  appeared,  however,  in  1910,  that  there 
were  in  the  empire,  including  the  industries  paying  an  excise 
duty,  19,983  establishments,  employing  2,253,790  persons, 
and  showing  a  yearly  production  of  4,565,400,000  roubles 
(£494,600,000).  Out  of  them,  the  industrial  establishments 
under  the  factory  inspectors  in  European  Russia  proper, 
Poland,  and  the  four  northern  provinces  of  Caucasia  num¬ 
bered  15,720,  employing  1,951,955  workpeople,  out  of  whom 
1,227,360  were  men,  521,236  women,  and  203,359  ohildren. 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


35 


especially  the  textile  industries  and  the  machinery 
works,  the  progress  appears  still  more  striking., 
Thus,  if  we  consider  the  eighteen  years  which 
preceded  1879  (when  the  import  duties  were 
increased  by  nearly  30  per  cent,  and  a  protective 
policy  was  definitely  adopted),  we  find  that 
even  without  protective  duties  the  bulk  of 
production  in  cottons  increased  three  times, 
while  the  number  of  workers  employed  in  that 
industry  rose  by  only  25  per  cent.  The  yearly 
production  of  each  worker  had  thus  grown 
from  £45  to  £117.  During  the  next  nine  years 
(1880-1889)  the  yearly  returns  were  more  than 
doubled,  attaining  the  respectable  figure  of 
£49,000,000  in  money  and  3,200,000  cwts.  in 
bulk.  Since  that  time,  from  1890  to  1900,  it 
has  doubled  once  more,  the  quantity  of  raw 
cotton  worked  in  the  Russian  factories  having 
increased  from  255,000  to  520,700  cwts.,  and  the 
number  of  spindles  having  grown  from  3,457,000 
to  6,646,000  in  1900,  and  to  8,306,000  in  1910.  It 
must  also  be  remarked  that,  with  a  population  of 
165,000,000  inhabitants,  the  home  market  for 
Russian  cottons  is  almost  unlimited ;  while 
some  cottons  are  also  exported  to  Persia  and 
Central  Asia.* 

*  The  yearly  imports  of  raw  cotton  from  Central  Asia  and 
Transcaucasia  represent,  as  a  rule,  about  one-tentli  part  of 
the  total  importsof  raw  cotton  (£1,086,000,  as  against  £1 1,923,000 


36 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


True,  that  the  finest  sorts  of  yarn,  as  well  as 
sewing  cotton,  have  still  to  be  imported.  But 
Lancashire  manufacturers  will  soon  see  to  that ; 
they  now  plant  their  mills  in  Russia.  Two  large 
mills  for  spinning  the  finest  sorts  of  cotton  yarn 
were  opened  in  Russia  in  1897,  with  the  aid  of 
English  capital  and  English  engineers,  and  a 
factory  for  making  thin  wire  for  cotton-carding 
has  lately  been  opened  at  Moscow  by  a  well- 
known  Manchester  manufacturer.  Several  more 
I  have  followed  since.  Capital  is  international  and, 

.  protection  or  no  protection,  it  crosses  the  fron¬ 
tiers. 

The  same  is  true  of  woollens.  In  this  branch 
Russia  was  for  a  certain  time  relatively  back¬ 
ward.  However,  wool-combing,  spinning  and 
weaving  mills,  provided  with  the  best  modem 
plant,  were  built  every  year  in  Russia  and 
Poland  by  English,  German  and  Belgian  mill- 
owners  ;  so  that  now  four-fifths  of  the  ordinary 
wool,  and  as  much  of  the  finer  sorts  obtainable 
in  Russia,  are  combed  and  spun  at  home — one 
fifth  part  only  of  each  being  sent  abroad.  The 

in  1910).  They  are  quite  a  recent  growth,  the  first  plantations 
of  the  American  cotton  tree  having  been  introduced  in  Turke¬ 
stan  by  the  Russians,  as  well  as  the  first  sorting  and  pressing 
establishments.  The  relative  cheapness  of  the  plain  cottons 
in  Russia,  and  the  good  qualities  of  the  printed  cottons, 
attracted  the  attention  of  the  British  Commissioner  at  tha 
Nijni  Novgorod  Exhibition  in  1897,  and  are  spoken  of  at  some 
length  in  his  report. 


OF  INDUSTRIES.  37 

times  when  Russia  was  known  as  an  exporter 
of  raw  wool  are  thus  irretrievably  gone.* 

In  machinery  works  no  comparison  can  even 
be  made  between  nowadays  and  1861,  or  even 
1870.  Thanks  to  English  and  French  engineers 
to  begin  with,  and  afterwards  to  technical  pro¬ 
gress  within  the  country  itself,  Russia  needs  no 
longer  to  import  any  part  of  her  railway  plant. 
And  as  to  agricultural  machinery,  we  know,  from 
several  British  Consular  reports,  that  Russian 
reapers  and  ploughs  successfully  compete  with 
the  same  implements  of  both  American  and 
English  make.  During  the  years  1880  to  1890, 
this  branch  of  manufactures  has  largely  developed 
in  the  Southern  Urals  (as  a  village  industry, 
brought  into  existence  by  the  Krasnoufimsk 
Technical  School  of  the  local  District  Council,  or 
zemstvo ),  and  especially  on  the  plains  sloping 
towards  the  Sea  of  Azov.  About  this  last 
region  Vice-Consul  Green  reported,  in  1894,  as 
follows  :  “  Besides  some  eight  or  ten  factories 
of  importance,”  he  wrote,  “  the  whole  of  the 
consular  district  is  now  studded  with  small 
engineering  works,  engaged  chiefly  in  the  manu¬ 
facture  of  agricultural  machines  and  implements, 
most  of  them  having  their  own  foundries.  .  .  . 

*  The  yearly  production  of  the  1,037  woollen  mills  of  Russia 
and  Poland  (149,850  workpeople)  was  valued  at  about 
£25,000,000  in  1910,  as  against  £12,000,000  in  1894. 


38 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


The  town  of  Berdyansk,”  he  added,  “  can  now 
boast  of  the  largest  reaper  manufactory  in  Eu¬ 
rope,  capable  of  turning  out  three  thousand 
machines  annually.”  * 

Let  me  add  that  the  above-mentioned  figures, 
including  only  those  manufactures  which  show 
a  yearly  return  of  more  than  £200,  do  not  include 
the  immense  variety  of  domestic  trades  which 
also  have  considerably  grown  of  late,  side  by 
side  with  the  manufactures.  The  domestic 
industries — so  characteristic  of  Russia,  and  so 
necessary  under  her  climate — occupy  now  more 
than  7,500,000  peasants,  and  their  aggregate 
production  was  estimated  a  few  years  ago  at 
more  than  the  aggregate  production  of  all  the 
manufactures.  It  exceeded  £180,000,000  per 
annum.  I  shall  have  an  occasion  to  return  later 
on  to  this  subject,  so  that  I  shall  be  sober  of 

*  Report  of  Vice-Consul  Green,  The  Economist ,  9th  June, 
1894  :  “  Reapers  of  a  special  type,  sold  at  £15  to  £17,  are 
durable  and  go  through  more  work  than  either  the  English 
or  the  American  reapers.”  In  the  year  1893,  20,000  reaping 
machines,  50,000  ploughs,  and  so  on,  were  sold  in  that  district 
only,  representing  a  value  of  £822,000.  Were  it  not  for  the 
simply  prohibitive  duties  imposed  upon  foreign  pig-iron  (two 
and  a  half  times  its  price  in  the  London  market),  this  industry 
would  have  taken  a  still  greater  development.  But  in  order 
to  protect  the  home  iron  industry — which  consequently  con¬ 
tinued  to  cling  to  obsolete  forms  in  the  Urals — a  duty  of  61s. 
a  ton  of  imported  pig-iron  Was  levied.  The  consequences  of  this 
policy  for  Russian  agriculture,  railways  and  State’s  budget 
have  been  discussed  in  full  in  a  work  by  A.  A.  Radzig,  The 
Iron  Industry  of  the  World.  St.  Petersburg,  1896  (Russian). 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


39 


figures,  and  merely  say  that  even  in  the  chief 
manufacturing  provinces  of  Russia  round  about 
Moscow  domestic  weaving — for  the  trade — 
shows  a  yearly  return  of  £4,500,000  ;  and  that 
even  in  Northern  Caucasia,  where  the  petty 
trades  are  of  a  recent  origin,  there  are,  in  the 
peasants’  houses,  45,000  looms  showing  a  yearly 
production  of  £200,000. 

As  to  the  mining  industries,  notwithstanding 
over-protection,  and  notwithstanding  the  com¬ 
petition  of  fuel  wood  and  naphtha,*  the  output 
of  the  coal  mines  of  Russia  has  doubled  during 
the  years  1896-1904,  and  in  Poland  it  has  in¬ 
creased  fourfold. |  Nearly  all  steel,  three-quarters 
of  the  iron,  and  two-thirds  of  the  pig-iron  used 
in  Russia  are  home  produce,  and  the  eight 
Russian  works  for  the  manufacture  of  steel  rails 
are  strong  enough  to  throw  on  the  market 
over  10,000,000  cwts.  of  rails  every  year 
(10,068,000  cwts.  in  1910)4 

It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that  the  imports 
of  manufactured  goods  into  Russia  are  so  in¬ 
significant,  and  that  since  1870 — that  is,  nine 

*  Out  of  the  1,500  steamers  which  ply  on  Russian  rivers 
one-quarter  are  heated  with  naphtha,  and  one-half  with  wood ; 
wood  is  also  the  chief  fuel  of  the  railways  and  ironworks  in 
the  Urals. 

f  The  output  was,  in  1910,  24,146,000  tons  in  European 
Russia,  and  1,065,000  tons  in  Siberia. 

J  See  Appendix  C. 


40  THE  DECENTRALISATION 

years  before- the  general  increase  of  duties — the 
proportion  of  manufactured  goods  to  the  aggre¬ 
gate  imports  has  been  on  a  steady  decrease. 
Manufactured  goods  make  now  only  one-fifth  of 
the  imports,  and  only  occasionally  rise  to  one- 
third,  as  was  the  case  in  1910 — a  year  of  maximal 
imports.  Besides,  while  the  imports  of  Britain 
into  Russia  were  valued  at  £16,300,000  in  1872, 
they  were  only  £6,884,500  to  £11,320,000  in  the 
years  1894  to  1909.  Out  of  them,  manufactured 
goods  were  valued  at  a  little  more  than  £2,000,000 
— the  remainder  being  either  articles  of  food  or 
raw  and  half-manufactured  goods  (metals,  yarn 
and  so  on).  They  reached  £15,300,000  in  1910 — 
a  year  of  maximum,  and  consisted  chiefly  of 
machinery  and  coal.  In  fact,  the  imports  of 
British  home  produce  have  declined  in  the  course 
of  ten  years  from  £8,800,000  to  £5,000,000,  so  as 
to  reduce  in  1910  the  value  of  British  manufac¬ 
tured  goods  imported  into  Russia  to  the  following 
trifling  items  :  machinery,  £1,320,000  ;  cottons 
and  cotton  yarn,  £360,000  ;  woollens  and  woollen 
yarn,  £480,000  ;  chemical  produce,  £476,000 ; 
and  so  on.  But  the  depreciation  of  British 
goods  imported  into  Russia  is  still  more  striking. 
Thus,  in  1876  Russia  imported  8,000,000  cwts.  of 
British  metals,  and  they  were  paid  £6,000,000  ; 
but  in  1884,  although  the  same  quantity  was 
imported,  the  amount  paid  was  only  £3,400,000. 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


41 


And  the  same  depreciation  is  seen  for  all  im¬ 
ported  goods,  although  not  always  in  the  same 
proportion. 

It  would  be  a  gross  error  to  imagine  that  the 
decline  of  foreign  imports  is  mainly  due  to  high 
protective  duties.  The  decline  of  imports  is  / 
much  better  explained  by  the  growth  of  home* 
industries.  The  protective  duties  have  no  doubt 
contributed  (together  with  other  causes)  towards 
attracting  German  andr  English  manufacturers 
to  Poland  and  Russia.  Lodz — the  Manchester 
of  Poland — is  quite  a  German  city,  and  the 
Russian  trade  directories  are  full  of  English  and 
German  names.  English  and  German  capitalists, 
English  engineers  and  foremen,  have  planted 
within  Russia  the  improved  cotton  manufactures 
of  their  mother  countries  ;  they  are  busy  now 
in  improving  the  woollen  industries  and  the 
production  of  machinery  ;  while  Belgians  have 
rapidly  created  a  great  iron  industry  in  South 
Russia.  There  is  now  not  the  slightest  doubt — 
and  this  opinion  is  shared,  not  only  by  econo¬ 
mists,  but  also  by  several  Russian  manufacturers 
— that  a  free-trade  policy  would  not  check  the 
further  growth  of  industries  in  Russia.  It  would 
only  reduce  the  high  profits  of  those  manufac¬ 
turers  who  do  not  improve  their  factories 
and  chiefly  rely  upon  cheap  labour  and  long 
hours. 


42 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


Moreover,  as  soon  as  Russia  succeeds  in 
obtaining  more  freedom,  a  further  growth  of  her 
industries  will  immediately  follow.  Technical 
education — which,  strange  to  say,  was  for  a  long 
time  systematically  suppressed  by  the  Govern¬ 
ment — would  rapidly  grow  and  spread  ;  and  in 
a  few  years,  with  her  natural  resources  and  her 
laborious  youth,  which  even  now  tries  to  com¬ 
bine  workmanship  with  science,  Russia  would 
see  her  industrial  powers  increase  tenfold. 
She  fara  da  se  in  the  industrial  field.  She  will 
manufacture  all  she  needs  ;  and  yet  she  will 
remain  an  agricultural  nation. 

At  the  present  time  only  a  little  more  than 
1,500,000  men  and  women,  out  of  the  112,000,000 
strong  population  of  European  Russia,  work  in 
manufactures,  and  7,500,000  combine  agricul¬ 
ture  with  manufacturing.  This  figure  may 
treble  without  Russia  ceasing  to  be  an  agricul¬ 
tural  nation  ;  but  if  it  be  trebled,  there  will 
be  no  room  for  imported  manufactured  goods, 
because  an  agricultural  country  can  produce 
them  cheaper  than  those  countries  which  live 
on  imported  food.  Let  us  not  forget  that  in  the 
United  Kingdom  1,087,200  persons,  all  taken,  are 
employed  in  all  the  textile  industries  of  England, 
Scotland,  Ireland  and  Wales,  and  that  only 
300,000  out  of  them  are  males  above  eighteen 
years  of  age  (311,000  in  1907)  ;  that  these  work- 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


43 


people  keep  going  53,000,000  spindles  and  more 
than  700,000  looms  in  the  cotton  factories  only  ; 
and  that  the  yearly  production  of  textiles  during 
the  last  few  years  was  so  formidable  that  it 
represented  a  value  of  £200,000,000,  and  that  the 
average  value  of  textiles  exported  every  year 
attained  £136,257,500  in  1905-1910 — to  say 
nothing  of  the  £163,400,000  reached  in  the 
extraordinary  year  of  1911.* 

The  same  is  still  more  true  with  regard  to 
other  European  nations,  much  more  advanced 


*  Here  are  the  figures  obtained  by  the  official  census  of 
1908.  In  all  the  cotton  industry,  only  220,563  men  (including 
boys),  262,245  women,  and  90,061  girls  less  than  eighteen 
years  old  were  employed.  They  produced  6,417,798,000  yards 
of  unbleached  gray,  and  611,824,000  yards  of  bleached  white 
and  coloured  cottons — that  is,  160  yards  per  head  of  popula¬ 
tion — and  1,507,381,000  lb.  of  yarn,  valued  £96,000,000.  We 
have  thus  12,271  yards  of  cotton,  and  2,631  lb.  of  yarn  per  person 
of  workpeople  employed.  For  woollens  and  worsted  there  were 
112,438  men  and  boys,  111,492  women,  and  34,087  girls  under 
eighteen.  The  value  (incomplete)  of  the  woven  goods  was 
about  £40,250,000,  and  that  of  the  yarn  about  £21,000,000. 
These  figures  are  most  instructive,  as  they  show  how  much 
man  can  produce  with  the  present  machinery.  Unfortunately, 
the  real  productivity  in  a  modern  factory  is  not  yet  understood 
by  the  economists.  Thus,  we  saw  lately  Russian  economists 
very  seriously  maintaining  that  it  was  necessary  to  “  prole- 
tarize  ”  the  peasants  (about  100,000,000)  in  order  to  create  a 
great  industry.  We  see  now  that  if  one-fourth,  or  even  one- 
fifth,  part  only  of  the  yearly  increase  of  the  population  took  to 
industry  (as  it  has  done  in  Germany),  Russian  factories  would 
soon  produce  such  quantities  of  all  sorts  of  manufactured  goods, 
that  they  would  be  able  to  supply  with  them  400  or  500 
million  people,  in  addition  to  the  population  of  the  Russian 
Empire. 


44 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


in  their  industrial  development,  and  especially 
with  regard  to  Germany.  So  much  has  been 
written  about  the  competition  which  Germany 
offers  to  British  trade,  even  in  the  British  mar¬ 
kets,  and  so  much  can  be  learned  about  it  from 
a  mere  inspection  of  the  London  shops,  that  I 
need  not  enter  into  lengthy  details.  Several 
articles  in  reviews  ;  the  correspondence  ex¬ 
changed  on  the  subject  in  The  Daily  Telegraph 
in  August,  1886 ;  numerous  consular  reports, 
regularly  summed  up  in  the  leading  newspapers, 
and  still  more  impressive  when  consulted  in 
originals  ;  and,  finally,  political  speeches,  have 
familiarised  the  public  opinion  of  this  country 
with  the  importance  and  the  powers  of  German 
competition.*  Moreover,  the  forces  which  Ger¬ 
man  industry  borrows  from  the  technical  train¬ 
ing  of  her  workmen,  engineers  and  numerous 
scientific  men,  have  been  so  often  discussed  by 
the  promoters  of  technical  education  in  England 
that  the  sudden  growth  of  Germany  as  an  in¬ 
dustrial  power  can  be  denied  no  more. 

Where  half  a  century  was  required  in  olden 
times  to  develop  an  industry,  a  few  years  are 
sufficient  now.  In  the  year  1864  only  160,000 

*  Many  facts  in  point  have  also  been  collected  in  a  little 
book,  Made  in  Germany,  by  E.  E.  Williams.  Unhappily,  the 
facts  relative  to  the  recent  industrial  development  of  Ger¬ 
many  are  so  often  used  in  a  partisan  spirit  in  order  to  promote 
protection  that  their  real  importance  is  often  misunderstood. 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


45 


cwts.  of  raw  cotton  were  imported  into  Germany, 
and  only  16,000  cwts.  of  cotton  goods  were  ex¬ 
ported  ;  cotton  spinning  and  weaving  were 
mostly  insignificant  home  industries.  Twenty 
years  later  the  imports  of  raw  cotton  were  al¬ 
ready  3,600,000  cwts.,  and  in  another  twenty 
years  they  rose  to  7,400,000  cwts.  ;  while  the 
exports  of  cottons  and  yarn,  which  were  valued 
at  £3,600,000  in  1883,  and  £7,662,000  in  1893, 
attained  £19,000,000  in  1905.  A  great  industry 
was  thus  created  in  less  than  thirty  years,  and 
has  been  growing  since.  The  necessary  technical 
skill  was  developed,  and  at  the  present  time 
Germany  remains  tributary  to  Lancashire  for 
the  finest  sorts  of  yarn  only.  However,  it  is 
very  probable  that  even  this  disadvantage  will 
soon  be  equalised.*  Very  fine  spinning  mills 
have  lately  been  erected,  and  the  emancipation 
from  Liverpool,  by  means  of  a  cotton  exchange 
established  at  Bremen,  is  in  fair  progress.')* 

In  the  woollen  trade  we  see  the  same  rapid 
increase,  and  in  1910  the  value  of  the  exports 
of  woollen  goods  attained  £13,152,500  (against 
£8,220,300  in  1894),  out  of  which  £1,799,000 
worth  were  sent  on  the  average  to  the  United 


*  Francke,  Die  neueste  Entwickelung  der  Teztil- Industrie  in 
Deutschland. 

f  Cf.  Schulze  Gawernitz,  Der  Grossbetrieb,  etc. — See  Appen¬ 
dixes  D,  E,  F, 


46 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


Kingdom  during  the  years  1906-1910.*  The 
flax  industry  has  grown  at  a  still  speedier  rate, 
and  as  regards  silks  Germany  is  second  only  to 
France. 

The  progress  realised  in  the  German  chemical 
trade  is  well  known,  and  it  is  only  too  badly  felt 
in  Scotland  and  Northumberland ;  while  the 
reports  on  the  German  iron  and  steel  industries 
which  one  finds  in  the  publications  of  the  Iron 
and  Steel  Institute  and  in  the  inquiry  which 
was  made  by  the  British  Iron  Trade  Association 
show  how  formidably  the  production  of  pig-iron 
and  of  finished  iron  has  grown  in  Germany  since 
1871.  (See  Appendix  D.)  No  wonder  that  the 
imports  of  iron  and  steel  into  Germany  were 
reduced  by  one-half  during  the  twenty  years, 
1874-1894,  while  the  exports  grew  nearly  four 
times.  As  to  the  machinery  works,  if  the  Ger¬ 
mans  have  committed  the  error  of  too  slavishly 
copying  English  patterns,  instead  of  taking  a 
new  departure,  and  of  creating  new  patterns,  as 
the  Americans  did,  we  must  still  recognise  that 
their  copies  are  good  and  that  they  very 
successfully  compete  in  cheapness  with  the 

*  The  imports  of  German  woollen  stuffs  into  this  country- 
have  steadily  grown  from  £607,444  in  1890  to  £907,569  in  1894, 
and  £1,822,514  in  1910.  The  British  exports  to  Germany  (of 
woollen  stuffs  and  yarns)  have  also  grown,  but  not  in  the  same 
proportion.  They  were  valued  at  £2,769,392  in  1890,  £3,017,163 
in  1894,  and  £4,638,000  in  1906-1910  (a  five  years’  average). 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


47 


tools  and  machinery  produced  in  this  country. 
(See  Appendix  E.)  I  hardly  need  mention  the 
superior  make  of  German  scientific  apparatus. 
It  is  well  known  to  scientific  men,  even  in  France. 

In  consequence  of  the  above,  the  imports  of 
manufactured  goods  into  Germany  are,  as  a 
rule,  in  decline.  The  aggregate  imports  of  tex¬ 
tiles  (inclusive  of  yarn)  stand  so  low  as  to  be  com¬ 
pensated  by  nearly  equal  values  of  exports.  And 
there  is  no  doubt  that  not  only  the  German 
markets  for  textiles  will  be  soon  lost  for  other 
manufacturing  countries,  but  that  German 
competition  will  be  felt  stronger  and  stronger 
both  in  the  neutral  markets  and  those  of  Western 
Europe.  One  can  easily  win  applause  from 
uninformed  auditories  by  exclaiming  with  more 
or  less  pathos  that  German  produce  can  never 
equal  the  English  !  The  fact  is,  that  it  competes 
in  cheapness,  and  sometimes  also — where  it  is 
needed — in  an  equally  good  workmanship  ; 
and  this  circumstance  is  due  to  many  causes. 

The  44  cheap  labour  ”  cause,  so  often  alluded 
to  in  discussions  about  44  German  competition,” 
which  take  place  in  this  country  and  in  France, 
must  be  dismissed  by  this  time,  since  it  has 
been  well  proved  by  so  many  recent  investiga¬ 
tions  that  low  wages  and  long  hours  do  not 
necessarily  mean  cheap  produce.  Cheap  labour 
and  protection  simply  mean  the  possibility  for 


48 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


a  number  of  employers  to  continue  working 
with  obsolete  and  bad  machinery ;  but  in 
highly  developed  staple  industries,  such  as  the 
cotton  and  the  iron  industries,  the  cheapest  pro¬ 
duce  is  obtained  with  high  wages,  short  hours 
and  the  best  machinery.  When  the  number  of 
operatives  which  is  required  for  each  1000 
spindles  can  vary  from  seventeen  (in  many 
Russian  factories)  to  three  (in  England),  and 
when  one  weaver  can  look  either  after  twenty 
Northrop  machine-looms,  as  we  see  it  in  the 
United  States,  or  after  two  machine-looms 
only,  as  it  is  the  case  in  backward  mills,  then 
it  is  evident  that  no  reduction  of  wages  can 
compensate  for  that  immense  difference.  Con¬ 
sequently,  in  the  best  German  cotton  mills  and 
ironworks  the  wages  of  the  worker  (we  know 
it  directly  for  the  ironworks  from  the  above- 
mentioned  inquiry  of  the  British  Iron  Trade 
Association)  are  not  lower  than  they  are  in 
Great  Britain.  All  that  can  be  said  is,  that 
the  worker  in  Germany  gets  more  for  his  wages 
than  he  gets  in  this  country — the  paradise  of  the 
middleman — a  paradise  which  it  will  remain  so 
long  as  it  lives  chiefly  on  imported  food  produce. 

The  chief  reason  for  the  successes  of  Germany 
in  the  industrial  field  is  the  same  as  it  is  for  the 
United  States.  Both  countries  have  only  lately 
entered  the  industrial  phase  of  their  development, 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


49 


and  they  have  entered  it  with  all  the  energy 
of  youth.  Both  countries  enjoy  a  widely- 
spread  scientifically-technical — or,  at  least,  con¬ 
crete  scientific — education.  In  both  countries  V 

manufactories  are  built  according  to  the  newest 
and  best  models  which  have  been  worked  out 
elsewhere  ;  and  both  countries  are  in  a  period 
of  awakening  in  all  branches  of  activity — 
literature  and  science,  industry  and  commerce. 
They  enter  now  on  the  same  phase  in  which 
Great  Britain  was  in  the  first  half  of  the  nine¬ 
teenth  century,  when  British  workers  took  such 
a  large  part  in  the  invention  of  the  wonderful 
modern  machinery. 

We  have  simply  before  us  a  fact  of  the  conse¬ 
cutive  development  of  nations.  And  instead  of 
decrying  or  opposing  it,  it  would  be  much 
better  to  see  whether  the  two  pioneers  of  the 
great  industry — Britain  and  France — cannot 
take  a  new  initiative  and  do  something  new 
again  ;  whether  an  issue  for  the  creative  genius 
of  these  two  nations  must  not  be  sought  for  in  a 
new  direction — namely,  the  utilisation  of  both 
the  land  and  the  industrial  powers  of  man  for 
securing  well-being  to  the  whole  nation  instead 
of  to  the  few. 


I 


CHAPTER  II. 


THE  DECENTRALISATION  OF  INDUSTRIES - 


(continued). 


Italy  and  Spain — India — Japan — The  United  States — The 
cotton,  woollen,  and  silk  trades — The  growing  necessity  for 
each  country  to  rely  chiefly  upon  home  consumers. 


HE  flow  of  industrial  growths  spreads,  how- 


X  ever,  not  only  east ;  it  moves  also  south¬ 
east  and  south.  Austria  and  Hungary  are  rapidly 
gaining  ground  in  the  race  for  industrial  im¬ 
portance.  The  Triple  Alliance  has  already 
been  menaced  by  the  growing  tendency  of 
Austrian  manufacturers  to  protect  themselves 
against  German  competition ;  and  even  the 
dual  monarchy  has  seen  its  two  sister  nations 
quarrelling  about  customs  duties.  Austrian 
industries  are  a  modern  growth,  and  still  they 
already  give  occupation  to  more  than  4,000,000 
workpeople.*  Bohemia,  in  a  few  decades,  has 

*  During  the  census  of  1902,  there  were  in  Austria  1,408,000 
industrial  establishments,  with  1,787,000  horse-power,  giving 
occupation  to  4,049,300  workpeople ;  1,128,000  workpeople 

were  engaged  in  manufactures  in  Hungary. 


DECENTRALISATION  OF  INDUSTRIES.  51 


grown  to  be  an  industrial  country  of  considerable 
importance  ;  and  the  excellence  and  originality 
of  the  machinery  used  in  the  newly  reformed 
flour-mills  of  Hungary  show  that  the  young 
industry  of  Hungary  is  on  the  right  road,  not 
only  to  become  a  competitor  to  her  elder  sisters, 
but  also  to  add  her  share  to  our  knowledge  as  to 
the  use  of  the  forces  of  nature.  Let  me  add, 
by  the  way,  that  the  same  is  true  to  some  extent 
with  regard  to  Finland.  Figures  are  wanting  as 
to  the  present  state  of  the  aggregate  industries 
of  Austria-Hungary ;  but  the  relatively  low 
imports  of  manufactured  goods  are  worthy  of 
note.  For  British  manufacturers  Austria-Hun¬ 
gary  is,  in  fact,  no  customer  worth  speaking 
of  ;  but  even  with  regard  to  Germany  she  is 
rapidly  emancipating  herself  from  her  former 
dependence.  (See  Appendix  G.) 

The  same  industrial  progress  extends  over 
the  southern  peninsulas.  Who  would  have 
spoken  in  1859  about  Italian  manufactures  ? 
And  yet — the  Turin  Exhibition  of  1884  has 
shown  it — Italy  ranks  already  among  the  manu¬ 
facturing  countries.  “You  see  everywhere  a 
considerable  industrial  and  commercial  effort 
made,”  wrote  a  French  economist  to  the  Temps. 
“  Italy  aspires  to  go  on  without  foreign  produce. 
The  patriotic  watchword  is,  Italy  all  by  herself. 
It  inspires  the  whole  mass  of  producers.  There 


52  THE  DECENTRALISATION 

is  not  a  single  manufacturer  or  tradesman  who, 
even  in  the  most  trifling  circumstances,  does 
not  do  his  best  to  emancipate  himself  from 
foreign  guardianship.”  The  best  French  and 
English  patterns  are  imitated  and  improved  by 
a  touch  of  national  genius  and  artistic  traditions. 
Complete  statistics  are  wanting,  so  that  the 
statistical  Annuario  resorts  to  indirect  indica¬ 
tions.  But  the  rapid  increase  of  imports  of  coal 
(9,339,000  tons  in  1910,  as  against  779,000  tons 
in  1871)  ;  the  growth  of  the  mining  industries, 
which  have  trebled  their  production  during 
the  fifteen  years,  1870  to  1885  ;  the  increasing 
production  of  steel  and  machinery  (£4,800,000 
in  1900),  which — to  use  Bovio’s  words — shows 
how  a  country  having  no  fuel  nor  minerals  of 
her  own  can  have  nevertheless  a  notable  metal¬ 
lurgical  industry  ;  and,  finally,  the  growth  of 
textile  industries  disclosed  by  the  net  imports 
of  raw  cottons  and  the  number  of  spindles* — 
all  these  show  that  the  tendency  towards  be¬ 
coming  a  manufacturing  country  capable  of 
satisfying  her  needs  by  her  own  manufactures 


*  The  net  imports  of  raw  cotton  reached  1,180,000  cwts. 
in  1885,  and  4,120,000  cwts.  in  1908  ;  the  number  of  spindles 
grew  from  880,000  in  1877  to  3,800,000  in  1907.  The  whole 
industry  has  grown  up  since  1859.  In  1910  no  less  than  358,200 
tons  of  pig-iron  and  671,000  tons  of  steel  were  produced  in 
Italy.  The  exports  of  textiles  reached  the  following  values  in 
1905-1910:  Silks,  from  £17,800,000  to  £24,794,000;  cottons, 
£4,430,000  to  £5,040,000  ;  woollens,  from  £440,000  to  £1,429,000. 


OF  INDUSTRIES.  53 

is  not  a  mere  dream.  As  to  the  efforts  made  for 
taking  a  more  lively  part  in  the  trade  of  the 
world,  who  does  not  know  the  traditional 
capacities  of  the  Italians  in  that  direction  ? 

I  ought  also  to  mention  Spain,  whose  textile 
mining  and  metallurgical  industries  are  rapidly 
growing  ;  but  I  hasten  to  go  over  to  countries 
which  a  few  years  ago  were  considered  as  eternal 
and  obligatory  customers  to  the  manufacturing 
nations  of  Western  Europe.  Let  us  take,  for 
instance,  Brazil.  Was  it  not  doomed  by  econo¬ 
mists  to  grow  cotton,  to  export  it  in  a  raw  state, 
and  to  receive  cotton  goods  in  exchange  ?  In 
1870  its  nine  miserable  cotton  mills  could  boast 
only  of  an  aggregate  of  385  spindles.  But 
already  in  1887  there  were  in  Brazil  46  cotton 
mills,  and  five  of  them  had  already  40,000  spin¬ 
dles  ;  while  altogether  their  nearly  10,000  looms 
threw  every  year  on  the  Brazilian  markets  more 
than  33,000,000  yards  of  cotton  stuffs. 

Twenty  five  years  later,  in  1912,  there  were 
already  161  cotton  mills,  with  1,500,000  spindles 
and  50,000  looms,  employing  over  100,000 
operatives.*  Even  Vera  Cruz,  in  Mexico, 
under  the  protection  of  customs  officers,  has 
begun  to  manufacture  cottons,  and  boasted  in 
1887  its  40,200  spindles,  287,700  pieces  of  cotton 
cloth,  and  212,000  lb.  of  yarn.  Since  that  year 

*  Times ,  August  27,  1912. 


54 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


progress  has  been  steady,  and  in  1894  Vice-Consul 
Chapman  reported  that  some  of  the  finest 
machines  are  to  be  found  at  the  Orizaba  spinning 
mills,  while  “  cotton  prints,”  he  wrote,  “  are 
now  turned  out  as  good  if  not  superior  to  the 
imported  article.”*  In  1910,  32,000  workpeople 
were  already  employed  in  145  cotton  mills, 
which  had  703,000  spindles,  and  25,000  power- 
looms,  f 

The  flattest  contradiction  to  the  export  theory 
rowever,  been  given  by  India.  She  was 


s  considered  as  the  surest  customer  for 


British  cottons,  and  so  she  has  been  until  quite 
lately.  Out  of  the  total  of  cotton  goods  exported 
from  Britain  she  used  to  buy  more  than  one- 
quarter,  very  nearly  one-third  (from  £17,000,000 
to  £22,000,000,  out  of  an  aggregate  of  about 
£75,000,000  in  the  years  1880-1890).  But  things 
have  begun  to  change,  and  in  1904-1907  the 
exports  were  only  from  £21,680,000  to  £25,680,000 
out  of  an  aggregate  of  £110,440,000.  The 
Indian  cotton  manufactures,  which — for  some 
causes  not  fully  explained — were  so  unsuccess¬ 
ful  at  their  beginnings,  suddenly  took  firm  root. 

*  The  Economist,  12th  May,  1894,  p.  9  :  “A  few  years  ago 
the  Orizaba  mills  used  entirely  imported  raw  cotton  ;  but  now 
they  use  home-grown  and  home-spun  cotton  as  much  as  pos¬ 
sible.” 

f  Annuario  Estadistico,  1911.  They  consumed  34,700  tons 
of  raw  cotton,  and  produced  13,936,300  pieces  of  cotton  goods, 
and  554,000  cwts.  of  yarn. 


/ 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


55 


In  1860  they  consumed  only  23,000,000  lb. 
of  raw  cotton,  but  the  quantity  was  nearly  four 
times  as  much  in  1877,  and  it  trebled  again  within 
the  next  ten  years  :  283,000,000  lb.  of  raw 

cotton  were  used  in  1887-1888.  The  number  of 
cotton  mills  grew  up  from  40  in  1887  to  147 
in  1895  ;  the  number  of  spindles  rose  from 
886,100  to  3,844,300  in  the  same  years  ;  and 
where  57,188  workers  were  employed  in  1887, 
we  found,  seven  years  later,  146,240  operatives. 
And  now,  in  1909-1910,  we  find  237  cotton  mills 
at  work,  with  6,136,000  spindles,  80,000  looms, 
and  231,850  workpeople.  As  for  the  quality  of 
the  mills,  the  blue-books  praise  them  ;  the 
German  chambers  of  commerce  state  that  the 
best  spinning  mills  in  Bombay  “  do  not  now 
stand  far  behind  the  best  German  ones  55  ;  and 
two  great  authorities  in  the  cotton  'industry, 
Mr.  James  Platt  and  Mr.  Henry  Lee,  agree  in 
saying  44  that  in  no  other  country  of  the  earth 
except  in  Lancashire  do  the  operatives  possess 
such  a  natural  leaning  to  the  textile  industry  as 
in  India.”  * 

The  exports  of  cotton  twist  from  India  more 
than  doubled  in  five  years  (1882-1887),  and 
already  in  1887  we  could  read  in  the  Statement 
(p.  62)  that  4  4  what  cotton  twist  was  imported 
was  less  and  less  of  the  coarser  and  even  medium 
*  Schulze  Gawernitz,  The  Cotton  Trade ,  etc.,  p.  123. 


56 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


kind,  which  indicates  that  the  Indian  (spinning) 
mills  are  gradually  gaining  hold  of  the  home 
markets.”  Consequently,  while  India  continued 
to  import  nearly  the  same  amount  of  British 
cotton  goods  and  yarn  (from  £16,000,000  to 
£25,700,000  in  1900-1908),  she  threw  already 
in  1887  on  the  foreign  markets  no  less  than 
£3,635,510  worth  of  her  own  cottons  of  Lanca¬ 
shire  patterns  ;  she  exported  33,000,000  yards  of 
gray  cotton  piece  goods  manufactured  in  India  by 
Indian  workmen.  And  the  export  has  continued 
to  grow  since,  so  that  in  the  year  1910-1911 
the  value  of  the  piece-goods  and  yarn  exported 
from  India  reached  the  value  of  £7,943,700. 

The  jute  factories  in  India  have  grown  at  a 
still  speedier  rate,  and  the  once  flourishing  jute 
trade  of  Dundee  was  brought  to  decay,  not  only 
by  the  high  tariffs  of  continental  powers,  but  also 
by  Indian  competition.*  Even  woollen  mills 
have  lately  been  started  ;  while  the  iron  industry 
took  a  sudden  development  in  India,  since  the 
means  were  found,  after  many  experiments  and 
failures,  to  work  furnaces  with  local  coal.  In  a 

*  In  1882  they  had  5,633  looms  and  95,937  spindles.  Thir¬ 
teen  years  later  these  figures  were  already  doubled — there 
being  10,600  looms  and  216,000  spindles.  Now,  or  rather  in 
1909-1910,  we  find  60  jute  mills,  with  31,420  looms,  645,700 
spindles,  and  204,000  workpeople.  The  progress  realised  in  the 
machinery  is  best  seen  from  these  figures.  The  exports  of  jute 
stuffs  from  India,  which  were  only  £1,543,870  in  1884-1885, 
reached  £11,333,000  in  1910-1911.  (See  Appendix  H.) 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


57 


few  years,  we  are  told  by  specialists,  India  will 
be  self-supporting  for  iron.  Nay,  it  is  not  with¬ 
out  apprehension  that  the  English  manufac¬ 
turers  see  that  the  imports  of  Indian  manufac¬ 
tured  textiles  to  this  country  are  steadily  growing, 
while  in  the  markets  of  the  Far  East  and  Africa 
India  becomes  a  serious  competitor  to  the  mother 
country. 

Why  should  it  not  be  so  ?  What  might  prevent 
the  growth  of  Indian  manufactures  ?  Is  it  the 
want  of  capital  ?  But  capital  knows  no  father- 
land  ;  and  if  high  profits  can  be  derived  from 
the  work  of  Indian  coolies  whose  wages  are  only 
one-half  of  those  of  English  workmen,  or  even 
less,  capital  will  migrate  to  India,  as  it  has  gone 
to  Russia,  although  its  migration  may  mean 
starvation  for  Lancashire  and  Dundee.  Is  it  the 
want  of  knowledge  ?  But  longitudes  and  lati¬ 
tudes  are  no  obstacle  to  its  spreading  ;  it  is 
only  the  first  steps  that  are  difficult.  As  to  the 
superiority  of  workmanship,  nobody  who  knows 
the  Hindoo  worker  will  doubt  about  his  capaci¬ 
ties.  Surely  they  are  not  below  those  of  the 
36,000  children  less  than  fourteen  years  of  age, 
or  the  238,000  boys  and  girls  less  than  eighteen 
years  old,  who  are  employed  in  the  British 
textile  manufactories. 

Twenty  years  surely  are  not  much  in  the  life 


58 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


of  nations.  And  yet  within  the  last  twenty 
years  another  powerful  competitor  has  grown 
in  the  East.  I  mean  Japan.  In  October,  1888, 
the  Textile  Recorder  mentioned  in  a  few  lines  that 
the  annual  production  of  yarns  in  the  cotton 
mills  of  Japan  had  attained  9,498,500  lb.,  and 
that  fifteen  more  mills,  which  would  hold 
156,100  spindles,  were  in  course  of  erection.* 
Two  years  later,  27,000,000  lb.  of  yarn  were  spun 
in  Japan  ;  and  while  in  1887-1888  Japan  imported 
five  or  six  times  as  much  yarn  from  abroad  as 
was  spun  at  home,  next  year  two-thirds  only 
of  the  total  consumption  of  the  country  were 
imported  from  abroad. | 

From  that  date  the  production  grew  up  regu¬ 
larly.  From  6,435,000  lb.  in  1886  it  reached 
91,950,000  lb.  in  1893,  and  153,444,000  lb.  in 
1 895.  In  nine  years  it  had  thus  increased  twenty- 
four  times.  Since  then  it  rose  to  413,800,000  lb. 
in  1909 ;  and  we  learn  from  the  Financial 
Economical  Annual  for  the  years  1910  and 
1911,  published  at  Tokio,  that  there  were  in 
Japan,  in  1909,  no  less  than  3,756  textile  fac¬ 
tories,  with  1,785,700  spindles  and  51,185  power- 
looms,  to  which  783,155  hand-looms  must  be 
added.  Japan  is  thus  already  a  serious  compe- 

*  Textile  Recorder,  15th  October,  1888. 

f  39,200,000  lb.  of  yarn  were  imported  in  1886  as  against 
6,435,000  lb.  of  home-spun  yarn.  In  1889  the  figures  were: 
56,633,000  lb.  imported  and  26,809,000  lb.  home-spun. 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


59 


titor  of  the  great  industrial  nations  for  tissues 
altogether,  and  especially  for  cottons,  in  the 
markets  of  Eastern  Asia  ;  and  it  took  it  only 
five-and-twenty  years  to  attain  this  position. 
The  total  production  of  tissues,  valued  at 
£1,200,000  in  the  year  1887,  rapidly  rose  to 
£14,270,000  in  1895  and  to  £22,500,000  in 
1909 — cottons  entering  into  this  amount  to  the 
extent  of  nearly  two-fifths.  Consequently,  the 
imports  of  foreign  cotton  goods  from  Europe 
fell  from  £1,640,000  in  1884  to  £849,600  in  1895, 
and  to  £411,600  in  1910,  while  the  exports  of 
silk  goods  rose  to  nearly  £3,000,000.* 

As  to  the  coal  and  iron  industries,  I  ventured 
in  the  first  edition  of  this  book  to  predict  that 
the  Japanese  would  not  long  remain  a  tributary 
to  Europe  for  iron  goods — that  their  ambition 
was  also  to  have  their  own  shipbuilding  yards, 
and  that  the  previous  year  300  engineers  left  the 
Els  wick  works  of  Mr.  Armstrong  in  order  to 
start  shipbuilding  in  Japan.  They  were  engaged 
for  five  years  only — the  Japanese  expecting  to 
have  learned  enough  in  five  years  to  be  their  own 
shipbuilders.  This  prediction  has  been  entirely 
fulfilled.  Japan  has  now  1,030  iron  and  machine 
works,  and  she  now  builds  her  own  warships. 


*  In  1910  the  imports  of  cotton  and  woollens  were  only 
£2,650,500,  while  the  exports  of  cotton  yarn,  cotton  shirtings, 
and  silk  manufactures  reached  a  value  of  £8,164,800. 


60 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


Daring  the  last  war,  the  progress  realised  in  all 
industries  connected  with  war  was  rendered 
fully  evident.* 

All  this  shows  that  the  much-dreaded  invasion 
of  the  East  upon  European  markets  is  in  rapid 
progress.  The  Chinese  slumber  still ;  but  I  am 
firmly  persuaded  from  what  I  saw  of  China  that 
the  moment  they  will  begin  to  manufacture  with 
the  aid  of  European  machinery — and  the  first 
steps  have  already  been  made — they  will  do  it 
with  more  success,  and  necessarily  on  a  far 
greater  scale,  than  even  the  Japanese. 


Rut  what  about  the  United  States,  which 
cannot  be  accused  of  employing  cheap  labour 
or  of  sending  to  Europe  “  cheap  and  nasty  ” 
produce  ?  Their  great  industry  is  of  yesterday’s 
date  ;  and  yet  the  •  States  already  send  to  old 
Europe  constantly  increasing  quantities  of 
machinery.  In  1890  they  began  even  to  export 
iron,  which  they  obtain  at  a  very  low  cost,  owing 
to  admirable  new  methods  which  they  have 
introduced  in  metallurgy. 

In  the  course  of  twenty  years  (1870-1890)  the 


*  The  mining  industry  has  grown  as  follows : — Copper  ex¬ 
tracted  :  2,407  tons  in  1875  ;  49,000  in  1909.  Coal :  567,200 
tons  in  1875  ;  15,535,000  in  1909.  Iron  :  3,447  tons  in  1875  ; 
15,268  in  1887  ;  65,000  in  1909.  (K.  Rathgen,  Japan's 

V olkwirthschaft  mid  Staatshaushaltung ,  Leipzig,  1891  ;  Consular 
Reports.) 


61 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 

number  of  persons  employed  in  the  American 
manufactures  was  more  than  doubled,  and  the 
value  of  their  produce  was  nearly  trebled  ;  and 
in  the  course  of  the  next  fifteen  years,  the  number 
of  persons  employed  increased  again  by  nearly 
fifty  per  cent.,  while  the  value  of  the  produce  was 
nearly  doubled.*  The  cotton  industry,  supplied 
with  excellent  home-made  machinery,  has  been 
rapidly  developing,  so  that  the  yearly  produc¬ 
tion  of  textiles  attained  in  1905  a  value  of 
2,147,441,400  dollars,  thus  being  twice  as  large 
as  the  yearly  production  of  the  United  Kingdom 
in  the  same  branch  (which  was  valued  at  about 
£200,000,000)  ;  and  the  exports  of  cottons  of 
domestic  manufacture  attained  in  1910  the 
respectable  figure  of  £8, 600, 000. *j*  As  to  the 
yearly  output  of  pig-iron  and  steel,  it  is  already 
in  excess  of  the  yearly  output  in  Britain ;  J  and 

*  Workers  employed  in  manufacturing  industries  :  2,054,000 
in  1870,  4,712,600  in  1890,  and  6,723,900  in  1905  (including 
salaried  officials  and  clerks).  Value  of  produce  :  3,385,861,000 
dollars  in  1870,  9,372,437,280  dollars  in  1890,  and  16,866,707,000 
in  1905.  Yearly  production  per  head  of  workers  :  1,648  dollars 
in  1870,  1,989  dollars  in  1890,  and  2,514  dollars  in  1905. 

t  About  the  cotton  industry  in  the  United  States,  see 
Appendix  I. 

|  It  was  from  7,255,076  to  9,811,620  tons  of  pig-iron  during 
the  years  1890-94,  and  27,303,600  long  tons  in  1910  (£85,000,000 
worth).  The  total  value  of  products  of  the  steel  works  and 
rolling  mills  reached  in  1909  the  immense  value  of  £197,144,500. 
In  the  Statesman's  Year -book  for  the  years  1910-1912,  the  reader 
may  find  most  striking  figures  concerning  the  rapid  growth  of 
the  iron  and  steel  industry  in  the  States.  We  have  nothing 
parallel  to  it  in  Europe. 


62  THE  DECENTRALISATION 

the  organisation  of  that  industry  is  also  superior, 
as  Mr.  Berkley  pointed  out,  already  in  1891, 
in  his  address  to  the  Institute  of  Civil  Engineers.* 
But  all  this  has  grown  almost  entirely  within 
the  last  thirty  or  forty  years — whole  industries 
having  been  created  entirely  since  1860.f  What 
will,  then,  American  industry  be  twenty  years 
hence,  aided  as  it  is  by  a  wonderful  development 
of  technical  skill,  by  excellent  schools,  a  scientific 
education  which  goes  hand  in  hand  with  technical 
education,  and  a  spirit  of  enterprise  which  is 
unrivalled  in  Europe  ? 


Volumes  have  been  written  about  the  crisis  of 
1886-1887,  a  crisis  which,  to  use  the  words  of 
the  Parliamentary  Commission,  lasted  since  1875, 
with  but  “  a  short  period  of  prosperity  enjoyed 
by  certain  branches  of  trade  in  the  years  1880 
to  1883,”  and  a  crisis,  I  shall  add,  which  ex¬ 
tended  over  all  the  chief  manufacturing  countries 
of  the  world.  All  possible  causes  of  the  crisis 
have  been  examined  ;  but,  whatever  the  caco- 

*  “  The  largest  output  of  one  blast-furnace  In  Great  Britain 
does  not  exceed  750  tons  in  the  week,  while  in  America  it  had 
reached  2000  tons  ”  ( Nature ,  19th  Nov.,  1891,  p.  65).  In  1909 
the  Bessemer  steel  plants  had  99  converters  ;  total  daily  capa¬ 
city  of  ingots  or  direct  castings,  double  turn,  in  1909,  45,983 
tons. 

t  J.  R.  Dodge,  Farm  and  Factory  :  Aids  to  Agriculture  from 
other  Industries,  New  York  and  London,  1884,  p.  111.  I  can  but 
highly  recommend  this  little  work  to  those  interested  in  the 
question. 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


63 


phony  of  conclusions  arrived  at,  all  unanimously 
agreed  upon  one,  namely,  that  of  the  Parlia¬ 
mentary  Commission,  which  could  be  summed 
up  as  follows  :  “  The  manufacturing  countries  v/ 
do  not  find  such  customers  as  would  enable  them 
to  realise  high  profits.”  Profits  being  the  basis 
of  capitalist  industry,  low  profits  explain  all 
ulterior  consequences. 

Low  profits  induce  the  employers  to  reduce  the 
wages,  or  the  number  of  workers,  or  the  number 
of  days  of  employment  during  the  week,  or  even¬ 
tually  compel  them  to  resort  to  the  manufacture 
of  lower  kinds  of  goods,  which,  as  a  rule,  are  paid 
worse  than  the  higher  sorts.  As  Adam  Smith  7 
said,  low  profits  ultimately  mean  a  reduction  of 
wages,  and  low  wages  mean  a  reduced  consump¬ 
tion  by  the  worker.  Low  profits  mean  also  a 
somewhat  reduced  consumption  by  the  em¬ 
ployer  ;  and  both  together  mean  lower  profits 
and  reduced  consumption  with  that  immense 
class  of  middlemen  which  has  grown  up  in 
manufacturing  countries,  and  that,  again,  means 
a  further  reduction  of  profits  for  the  em¬ 
ployers. 

A  country  which  manufactures  to  a  great 
extent  for  export,  and  therefore  lives  to  a  con¬ 
siderable  amount  on  the  profits  derived  from  her 
foreign  trade,  stands  very  much  in  the  same 
position  as  Switzerland,  which  lives  to  a  great 


\  64  THE  DECENTRALISATION 

extent  on  the  profits  derived  from  the  foreigners 
who  visit  her  lakes  and  glaciers.  A  good  “  sea¬ 
son  ”  means  an  influx  of  from  £1,000,000  to 
£2,000,000  of  money  imported  by  the  tourists, 
and  a  bad  “  season  ”  has  the  effects  of  a  bad 
crop  in  an  agricultural  country  :  a  general  im¬ 
poverishment  follows.  So  it  is  also  with  a 
country  which  manufactures  for  export.  If  the 
“  season  ”  is  bad,  and  the  exported  goods  cannot  ‘ 
be  sold  abroad  for  twice  their  value  at  home,  the 
country  which  lives  chiefly  on  these  bargains 
suffers.  Low  profits  for  the  innkeepers  of  the 
Alps  mean  narrowed  circumstances  in  large 
parts  of  Switzerland  ;  and  low  profits  for  the 
Lancashire  and  Scotch  manufacturers,  and  the 
wholesale  exporters,  mean  narrowed  circum¬ 
stances  in  Great  Britain.  The  cause  is  the  same 
in  both  cases. 

For  many  decades  past  we  had  not  seen  such 
v&  cheapness  of  wheat  and  manufactured  goods 
as  we  saw  in  1883-1884,  and  yet  in  1886  the 
country  was  suffering  from  a  terrible  crisis. 
People  said,  of  course,  that  the  cause  of  the  crisis 
was  over-production.  But  over-production  is  a 
/word  utterly  devoid  of  sense  if  it  does  not  mean 
*  that  those  who  are  in  need  of  all  kinds  of  produce 
have  not  the  means  for  buying  them  with  their 
low  wages.  Nobody  would  dare  to  affirm  that 
there  is  too  much  furniture  in  the  crippled  cot- 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


65 


tages,  too  many  bedsteads  and  bedclothes  in  the 
workmen’s  dwellings,  too  many  lamps  burning 
in  the  huts,  and  too  much  cloth  on  the  shoulders, 
not  only  of  those  who  used  to  sleep  (in  1886)  in 
Trafalgar  Square  between  two  newspapers,  but 
even  in  those  households  where  a  silk  hat  makes 
a  part  of  the  Sunday  dress.  And  nobody  will 
dare  to  affirm  that  there  is  too  much  food  in 
the  homes  of  those  agricultural  labourers  who 
earn  twelve  shillings  a  week,  or  of  those  women 
who  earn  from  fivepence  to  sixpence  a  day  in  the 
clothing  trade  and  other  small  industries  which 
swarm  in  the  outskirts  of  all  great  cities.  Over-v/ 
production  means  merely  and  simply  a  want  of 
purchasing  powers  amidst  the  workers.  And 
the  same  want  of  purchasing  powers  of  the 
workers  was  felt  everywhere  on  the  Continent 
during  the  years  1885-1887. 

After  the  bad  years  were  over,  a  sudden 
revival  of  international  trade  took  place  ;  and, 
as  the  British  exports  rose  in  four  years  (1886  to 
1890)  by  nearly  24  per  cent.,  it  began  to  be  said 
that  there  was  no  reason  for  being  alarmed  by 
foreign  competition  ;  that  the  decline  of  exports 
in  1885-1887  was  only  temporary,  and  general 
in  Europe  ;  and  that  England,  now  as  of  old, 
fully  maintained  her  dominant  position  in  the 
international  trade.  It  is  certainly  true  that  if 
we  consider  exclusively  the  money  value  of  the 

3 


66 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


exports  for  the  years  1876  to  1895,  we  see  no 
permanent  decline,  we  notice  only  fluctuations. 
British  exports,  like  commerce  altogether,  seem 
to  show  a  certain  periodicity.  They  fell  from 
£201,000,000  sterling  in  1876  to  £192,000,000  in 
1879  ;  then  they  rose  again  to  £241,000,000  in 
1882,  and  fell  down  to  £213,000,000  in  1886  ; 
again  they  rose  to  £264,000,000  in  1890,  but  fell 
again,  reaching  a  minimum  of  £216,000,000  in 
1894,  to  be  followed  next  year  by  a  slight  move¬ 
ment  upwards. 

This  periodicity  being  a  fact,  Mr.  Giffen  could 
make  light  in  1886  of  “  German  competition  ” 
by  showing  that  exports  from  the  United  King¬ 
dom  had  not  decreased.  It  can  even  be  said 
that,  per  head  of  population,  they  had  remained 
unchanged  until  1904,  undergoing  only  the  usual 
ups  and  downs.*  However,  when  we  come  to 
consider  the  quantities  exported,  and  compare 
them  with  the  money  values  of  the  exports,  even 

*  Per  head  of  population  the  exports  of  British  produce 


appear,  in  shillings,  as  follows 

1876.. .121s*  1885... 118s. 

1894...111s. 

1903... 138s. 

1877.. .119s. 

1886 ...117s. 

1895.. .112s. 

1904... 141s. 

1878.. .114s. 

1887... 121s. 

1896.. .116s. 

1905...153s. 

1879. ..112s. 

1888... 127s. 

1897. ..117s. 

1906... 173s. 

1880... 129s. 

1889... 134s. 

1898...  116s. 

1907. ..194s. 

1881... 134s. 

1890... 141s* 

1899...  130s* 

1908.. 

1882...137S* 

1891... 131s. 

1900...  142s* 

1909... 192s. 

1883... 135s. 

1892.. .119s. 

1901...135s. 

1910... 201s* 

1884... 130s. 

1893.. .114s. 

1902... 135  s. 

OF  INDUSTRIES. 


67 


Mr.  Giffen  had  to  acknowledge  that  the  prices^ 
of  1883  were  so  low  in  comparison  with  those  - 
of  1873  that  in  order  to  reach  the  same  money 
value  the  United  Kingdom  would  have  had  to 
export  four  pieces  of  cotton  instead  of  three, 
and  eight  or  ten  tons  of  metallic  goods  instead 
of  six.  4 6  The  aggregate  of  British  foreign  trade, 
if  valued  at  the  prices  of  ten  years  previously, 
would  have  amounted  to  £861,000,000  instead  of 
£667,000,000,”  we  were  told  by  no  less  an 
authority  than  the  Commission  on  Trade  De¬ 
pression. 

It  might,  however,  be  said  that  1873  was  an 
exceptional  year,  owing  to  the  inflated  demand 
which  took  place  after  the  Franco-German  war. 
But  the  same  downward  movement  continued  for 
a  number  of  years.  Thus,  if  we  take  the  figures 
given  in  the  Statesman’s  Year-book ,  we  see  that 
while  the  United  Kingdom  exported,  in  1883, 
4,957,000,000  yards  of  piece  goods  (cotton, 
woollen  and  linen)  and  316,000,000  lb.  of  yarn  in 
order  to  reach  an  export  value  of  £104,000,000, 
the  same  country  had  to  export,  in  1895,  no  less 
than  5,478,000,000  yards  of  the  same  stuffs  and 
330,000,000  lb.  of  yarn  in  order  to  realise 
£99,700,000  only.  And  the  figures  would  have 
appeared  still  more  unfavourable  if  we  took 
the  cottons  alone.  True,  the  conditions  im¬ 
proved  during  the  last  ten  years,  so  that  in 


68  THE  DECENTRALISATION 

1906  the  exports  were  similar  to  those  of  1873 ; 
and  they  were  better  still  in  1911,  which  was  a 
year  of  an  extraordinary  foreign  trade,  when 
7,041,000,000  yards  of  stuffs  and  307,000,000  lb. 
of  yarn  were  exported — the  two  being  valued  at 
£163,400,000.  However,  it  was  especially  the 
yarn  which  kept  the  high  prices,  because  it  is 
the  finest  sorts  of  yarn  which  are  now  exported. 
Rut  the  great  profits  of  the  years  1873-1880 
are  irretrievably  gone. 

We  thus  see  that  while  the  total  value  of  the 
exports  from  the  United  Kingdom,  in  proportion 
to  its  growing  population,  remains,  broadly 
speaking,  unaltered  for  the  last  thirty  years,  the 
high  prices  which  could  be  got  for  the  exports 
thirty  years  ago,  and  with  them  the  high  profits, 
are  gone.  And  no  amount  of  arithmetical  cal¬ 
culations  will  persuade  the  British  manufacturers 
'  that  such  is  not  the  case.  They  know  perfectly 
well  that  the  home  markets  grow  continually 
overstocked  ;  that  the  best  foreign  markets  are 
escaping ;  and  that  in  the  neutral  markets 
Britain  is  being  undersold.  This  is  the  un¬ 
avoidable  consequence  of  the  development  of  ; 
manufactures  all  over  the  world.  (See  Ap¬ 
pendix  J.) 

Great  hopes  were  laid,  some  time  ago,  in  Aus¬ 
tralia  as  a  market  for  British  goods ;  but 
Australia  will  soon  do  what  Canada  already 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


69 


does.  She  will  manufacture.  And  the  colonial 
exhibitions,  by  showing  to  the  “  colonists  ”  what 
they  are  able  to  do,  and  how  they  must  do,  are 
only  accelerating  the  day  when  each  colony  fara 
da  se  in  her  turn.  Canada  and  India  already 
impose  protective  duties  on  British  goods.  As 
to  the  much-spoken-of  markets  on  the  Congo, 
and  Mr.  Stanley’s  calculations  and  promises  of  a 
trade  amounting  to  £26,000,000  a  year  if  the 
Lancashire  people  supply  the  Africans  with  loin¬ 
cloths,  such  promises  belong  to  the  same  cate¬ 
gory  of  fancies  as  the  famous  nightcaps  of  the 
Chinese  which  were  to  enrich  England  after  the 
first  Chinese  war.  The  Chinese  prefer  their  own 
home-made  nightcaps  ;  and  as  to  the  Congo 
people,  four  countries  at  least  are  already  com¬ 
peting  for  supplying  them  with  their  poor  dress  : 
Britain,  Germany,  the  United  States,  and,  last 
but  not  least,  India. 

There  was  a  time  when  this  country  had  almost 
the  monopoly  in  the  cotton  industries ;  but 
already  in  1880  she  possessed  only  55  per  cent,  of 
all  the  spindles  at  work  in  Europe,  the  United 
States  and  India  (40,000,000  out  of  72,000,000), 
and  a  little  more  than  one-half  of  the  looms 
(550,000  out  of  972,000).  In  1893  the  proportion 
was  further  reduced  to  49  per  cent,  of  the  spindles 
(45,300,000  out  of  91,340,000),  and  now  the 
United  Kingdom  has  only  41  per  cent,  of  all 


70 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


✓ 


the  spindles.*  It  was  thus  losing  ground  while 
the  others  were  winning.  And  the  fact  is  quite 
natural :  it  might  have  been  foreseen.  There  is 
no  reason  why  Britain  should  always  be  the  great 
cotton  manufactory  of  the  world,  when  raw 
cotton  has  to  be  imported  into  this  country  as 
elsewhere.  It  was  quite  natural  that  France, 
Germany,  Italy,  Russia,  India,  Japan,  the 
United  States,  and  even  Mexico  and  Brazil, 
should  begin  to  spin  their  own  yarns  and  to 
weave  their  own  cotton  stuffs.  But  the  appear¬ 
ance  of  the  cotton  industry  in  a  country,  or,  in 
fact,  of  any  textile  industry,  unavoidably  becomes 
the  starting-point  for  the  growth  of  a  series  of 
other  industries ;  chemical  and  mechanical 
works,  metallurgy  and  mining  feel  at  once  the 
impetus  given  by  a  new  want.  The  whole  of  the 
home  industries,  as  also  technical  education 
altogether,  must  improve  in  order  to  satisfy 
that  want  as  soon  as  it  has  been  felt. 


*  The  International  Federation  of  the  Cotton  Industry 
employers  gave,  on  March  1,  1909,  the  following  numbers  of 
spindles  in  the  different  countries  of  the  Old  and  New  Worlds  : — 

United  Kingdom  .  .  53,472,000  =  41  per  cent. 

United  States  .  .  .  27,846,000  =  21 

Germany  ....  9,881,000  =  8 

Russia .  7,829,000  =  6 

France .  6,750,000  =  5 

British  India  .  .  .  5,756,000  =  4 

Other  nations  .  .  .  19,262,000  =  15 

130,796,000  =  100 


99 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


71 


What  has  happened  with  regard  to  cottons  is 
going  on  also  with  regard  to  other  industries. 
Great  Britain,  which  stood  in  1880  at  the  head 
of  the  list  of  countries  producing  pig-iron,  came 
in  1904  the  third  in  the  same  list,  which  was 
headed  by  the  United  States  and  Germany ; 
while  Russia,  which  occupied  the  seventh  place 
in  1880,  comes  now  fourth,  after  Great  Britain.* 
Britain  and  Belgium  have  no  longer  the  monopoly 
of  the  woollen  trade.  Immense  factories  at 
Venders  are  silent ;  the  Belgian  weavers  are 
misery-stricken,  while  Germany  yearly  increases 
her  production  of  woollens,  and  exports  nine 
times  more  woollens  than  Belgium.  Austria  has 
her  own  woollens  and  exports  them ;  Riga, 
Lodz,  and  Moscow  supply  Russia  with  fine  wool¬ 
len  cloths  ;  and  the  growth  of  the  woollen  in¬ 
dustry  in  each  of  the  last-named  countries  calls 
into  existence  hundreds  of  connected  trades. 

For  many  years  France  has  had  the  monopoly 
of  the  silk  trade.  Silkworms  being  reared  in 
Southern  France,  it  was  quite  natural  that 
Lyons  should  grow  into  a  centre  for  the  manu¬ 
facture  of  silks.  Spinning,  domestic  weaving, 
and  dyeing  works  developed  to  a  great  extent. 
But  eventually  the  industry  took  such  an 

*  J.  Stephen  Jeans,  The  Iron  Trade  of  Great  Britain  (London, 
Methuen),  1905,  p.  46.  The  reader  will  find  in  this  interesting 
little  work  valuable  data  concerning  the  growth  and  improve¬ 
ment  of  the  iron  industry  in  different  countries. 


72 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


extension  that  home  supplies  of  raw  silk  became 
insufficient,  and  raw  silk  was  imported  from 
Italy,  Spain  and  Southern  Austria,  Asia  Minor, 
the  Caucasus  and  Japan,  to  the  amount  of  from 
£9,000,000  to  £11,000,000  in  1875  and  1876, 
while  France  had  only  £800,000  worth  of  her  own 
silk.  Thousands  of  peasant  boys  and  girls  were 
attracted  by  high  wages  to  Lyons  and  the  neigh¬ 
bouring  district  ;  the  industry  was  prosperous. 

However,  by-and-by  new  centres  of  silk  trade 
grew  up  at  Basel  and  in  the  peasant  houses 
round  Zurich.  French  emigrants  imported  the 
trade  into  Switzerland,  and  it  developed  there, 
especially  after  the  civil  war  of  1871.  Then  the 
Caucasus  Administration  invited  French  work¬ 
men  and  women  from  Lyons  and  Marseilles  to 
teach  the  Georgians  and  the  Russians  the  best 
means  of  rearing  the  silkworm,  as  well  as  the 
whole  of  the  silk  trade  ;  and  Stavropol  became 
a  new  centre  for  silk  weaving.  Austria  and  the 
United  States  did  the  same  ;  and  what  are  now 
the  results  ? 

During  the  years  1872  to  1881  Switzerland 
more  than  doubled  the  produce  of  her  silk  in¬ 
dustry  ;  Italy  and  Germany  increased  it  by  one- 
third  ;  and  the  Lyons  region,  which  formerly 
manufactured  to  the  value  of  454  million  francs 
a  year,  showed  in  1887  a  return  of  only  378 
millions.  The  exports  of  Lyons  silks,  which 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


73 


reached  an  average  of  425,000,000  francs  in 
1855-1859,  and  460,000,000  in  1870-1874,  fell 
down  to  233,000,000  in  1887.  And  it  is  reckoned 
by  French  specialists  that  at  present  no  less  than 
one-third  of  the  silk  stuffs  used  in  France  are 
imported  from  Zurich,  Crefeld,  and  Barmen. 
Nay,  even  Italy,  which  has  now  191,000  persons 
engaged  in  the  industry,  sends  her  silks  to 
France  and  competes  with  Lyons. 

The  French  manufacturers  may  cry  as  loudly 
as  they  like  for  protection,  or  resort  to  the  pro¬ 
duction  of  cheaper  goods  of  lower  quality  ; 
they  may  sell  3,250,000  kilogrammes  of  silk 
stuffs  at  the  same  price  as  they  sold  2,500,000  in 
1855-1859 — they  will  never  again  regain  the 
position  they  occupied  before.  Italy,  Switzer¬ 
land,  Germany,  the  United  States  and  Russia 
have  their  own  silk  factories,  and  will  import 
from  Lyons  only  the  highest  qualities  of  stuffs. 
As  to  the  lower  sorts,  a  foulard  has  become  a 
common  attire  with  the  St.  Petersburg  house¬ 
maids,  because  the  North  Caucasian  domestic 
trades  supply  them  at  a  price  which  would  starve 
the  Lyons  weavers.  The  trade  has  been  decen¬ 
tralised,  and  while  Lyons  is  still  a  centre  for  the 
higher  artistic  silks,  it  will  never  be  again  the 
chief  centre  for  the  silk  trade  which  it  was  thirty 
years  ago. 

Like  examples  could  be  produced  by  the  score. 


74 


THE  DECENTRALISATION 


Greenock  no  longer  supplies  Russia  with  sugar, 
because  Russia  has  plenty  of  her  own  at  the 
same  pric'e  as  it  sells  at  in  England.  The  watch 
trade  is  no  more  a  speciality  of  Switzerland  : 
watches  are  now  made  everywhere.  India 
extracts  from  her  ninety  collieries  two-thirds 
of  her  annual  consumption  of  coal.  The  chemi¬ 
cal  trade  which  grew  up  on  the  banks  of  the 
Clyde  and  Tyne,  owing  to  the  special  advantages 
offered  for  the  import  of  Spanish  pyrites  and  the 
agglomeration  of  such  a  variety  of  industries 
along  the  two  estuaries,  is  now  in  decay.  Spain, 
with  the  help  of  English  capital,  is  beginning  to 
utilise  her  own  pyrites  for  herself  ;  and  Germany 
has  become  a  great  centre  for  the  manufacture 
of  sulphuric  acid  and  soda — nay,  she  already 
complains  about  over-production. 

1 

But  enough !  I  have  before  me  so  many 
figures,  all  telling  the  same  tale,  that  examples 
could  be  multiplied  at  will.  It  is  time  to  con¬ 
clude,  and,  for  every  unprejudiced  mind,  the 
conclusion  is  self-evident.  Industries  of  all 
!  kinds  decentralise  and  are  scattered  all  over  the 
globe  ;  and  everywhere  a  variety,  an  integrated 
variety,  of  trades  grows,  instead  of  specialisation. 
Such  are  the  prominent  features  of  the  times  we 
live  in.  Each  nation  becomes  in  its  turn  a 
manufacturing  nation  ;  and  the  time  is  not  far 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


off  when  each  nation  of  Europe,  as  well  as  the 
United  States,  and  even  the  most  backward 
nations  of  Asia  and  America,  will  themselves  ' 
manufacture  nearly  everything  they  are  in  need 
of.  Wars  and  several  accidental  causes  may/ 
check  for  some  time  the  scattering  of  industries  :  i 
they  will  not  stop  it ;  it  is  unavoidable.  For) 
each  new-comer  the  first  steps  only  are  difficult. 
But,  as  soon  as  any  industry  has  taken  firm  root, 
it  calls  into  existence  hundreds  of  other  trades  ; 
and  as  soon  as  the  first  steps  have  been  made, 
and  the  first  obstacles  have  been  overcome,  the 
industrial  growth  goes  on  at  an  accelerated  rate. 

The  fact  is  so  well  felt,  if  not  understood,  that 
the  race  for  colonies  has  become  the  distinctive 
feature  of  the  last  twenty  years.  Each  nation 
will  have  her  own  colonies.  But  colonies  will  not 
help^.  There  is  not  a  second  India  in  the  world, 
and  the  old  conditions  will  be  repeated  no  more. 
Nay,  some  of  the  British  colonies  already  threaten 
to  become  serious  competitors  with  their  mother 
country  ;  others,  like  Australia,  will  not  fail 
to  follow  the  same  lines.  As  to  the  yet  neutral 
markets,  China  will  never  be  a  serious  customer 
to  Europe  :  she  can  produce  much  cheaper  at 
home  ;  and  when  she  begins  to  feel  a  need  for 
goods  of  European  patterns,  she  will  produce  them 
herself.  Woe  to  Europe,  if  on  the  day  that  the 
steam  engine  invades  China  she  is  still  relying  on 


76  THE  DECENTRALISATION 

foreign  customers  !  As  to  the  African  half- 
^  savages,  their  misery  is  no  foundation  for  the 
well-being  of  a  civilised  nation. 

Progress  must  be  looked  for  in  another 
direction.  It  is  in  producing  for  home  use.  The 
customers  for  the  Lancashire  cottons  and  the 
Sheffield  cutlery,  the  Lyons  silks  and  the  Hun¬ 
garian  flour-mills,  are  not  in  India,  nor  in  Africa. 

The  true  consumers  of  the  produce  of  our 
^factories  must  be  our  own  populations.  And 
they  can  be  that,  once  we  organise  our  economical 
life  so  that  they  might  issue  from  their  present 
destitution.  No  use  to  send  floating  shops  to 
New  Guinea  with  British  or  German  millinery, 
when  there  are  plenty  of  would-be  customers 
for  British  millinery  in  these  very  islands,  and 
for  German  goods  in  Germany.  Instead  of 
worrying  our  brains  by  schemes  for  getting 
customers  abroad,  it  would  be  better1  to 
try  to  answer  the  following  questions  :  Why 
the  British  worker,  whose  industrial  capacities 
are  so  highly  praised  in  political  speeches  ; 
why  the  Scotch  crofter  and  the  Irish  peasant, 
whose  obstinate  labours  in  creating  new  produc¬ 
tive  soil  out  of  peat  bogs  are  occasionally  so  much 
spoken  of,  are  no  customers  to  the  Lancashire 
weavers,  the  Sheffield  cutlers  and  the  North¬ 
umbrian  and  Welsh  pitmen  ?  Why  the  Lyons 
^  weavers  not  only  do  not  wear  silks,  but  sometimes 


OF  INDUSTRIES. 


77 


have  no  food  in  their  attics  ?  Why  the  Russian  ^ 
peasants  sell  their  corn,  and  for  four,  six,  and 
sometimes  eight  months  every  year  are  com¬ 
pelled  to  mix  bark  and  auroch  grass  to  a  handful 
of  flour  for  baking  their  bread  ?  Why  famines 
are  so  common  amidst  the  growers  of  wheat  and 
rice  in  India  ? 

Under  the  present  conditions  of  division  into  ^ 
capitalists  and  labourers,  into  property-holders 
and  masses  living  on  uncertain  wages,  the  spread¬ 
ing  of  industries  over  new  fields  is  accompanied  [ 
by  the  very  same  horrible  facts  of  pitiless 
oppression,  massacre  of  children,  pauperism,  and 
insecurity  of  life.  The  Russian  Fabrics  Inspec¬ 
tors’  Reports,  the  Reports  of  the  Plauen  Handels- 
pammer,  the  Italian  inquests,  and  the  reports 
about  the  growing  industries  of  India  and  Japan 
are  full  of  the  same  revelations  as  the  Reports 
of  the  Parliamentary  Commissions  of  1840  to 
1842,  or  the  modern  revelations  with  regard 
to  the  “  sweating  system  ”  at  Whitechapel  and 
Glasgow,  London  pauperism,  and  York  un¬ 
employment.  The  Capital  and  Labour  prob¬ 
lem  is  thus  universalised  ;  but,  at  the  same 
time,  it  is  also  simplified.  To  return  to  a  state'; 
of  affairs  where  corn  is  grown,  and  manufactured 
goods  are  fabricated,  for  the  use  of  those  very  peoX 
pie  who  grow  and  produce  them — such  will  be/ 
no  doubt,  the  problem  to  be  solved  during  the 


78  DECENTRALISATION  OF  INDUSTRIES. 


next  coming  years  of  European  history.  Each 
region  will  become  its  own  producer  and  its 
own  consumer  of  manufactured  goods.  But 
that  unavoidably  implies  that,  at  the  same  time, 
it  will  be  its  own  producer  and  consumer  of 
agricultural  produce  ;  and  that  is  precisely  what 
I  am  going  to  discuss  next. 


CHAPTER  III. 


THE  POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE. 

The  development  of  agriculture — Over-population  prejudice — 
Can  the  soil  of  Great  Britain  feed  its  inhabitants  ? — British 
agriculture — Compared  with  agriculture  in  France  ;  in 
Belgium ;  in  Denmark — Market-gardening  ;  its  achieve¬ 
ments — Is  it  profitable  to  grow  wheat  in  Great  Britain? — 
American  agriculture  :  intensive  culture  in  the  States. 

THE  industrial  and  commercial  history  of 
the  world  during  the  last  fifty  years  has 
been  a  history  of  decentralisation  of  industry.'^ 
It  was  not  a  mere  shifting  of  the  centre  of 
gravity  of  commerce,  such  as  Europe  witnessed 
in  the  past,  when  the  commercial  hegemony 
migrated  from  Italy  to  Spain,  to  Holland,  and 
finally  to  Britain  :  it  had  a  much  deeper  meaning, 
as  it  excluded  the  very  possibility  of  commercial 
or  industrial  hegemony.  It  has  shown  the 
growth  of  quite  new  conditions,  and  new  con¬ 
ditions  require  new  adaptations.  To  endeavour 
to  revive  the  past  would  be  useless  :  a  new  de¬ 
parture  must  be  taken  by  civilised  nations. 

Of  course,  there  will  be  plenty  of  voices  to  argue 


80 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


that  the  former  supremacy  of  the  pioneers  must 
be  maintained  at  any  price  :  all  pioneers  are  in 
the  habit  of  saying  so.  It  will  be  suggested  / 
that  the  pioneers  must  attain  such  a  superiority 
of  technical  knowledge  and  organisation  as  to 
enable  them  to  beat  all  their  younger  com¬ 
petitors  ;  that  force  must  be  resorted  to  if 
necessary.  But  force  is  reciprocal ;  and  if  the 
god  of  war  always  sides  with  the  strongest  bat¬ 
talions,  those  battalions  are  strongest  which  fight 
for  new  rights  against  outgrown  privileges.  As 
to  the  honest  longing  for  more  technical  educa¬ 
tion — surely  let  us  all  have  as  much  of  it  as 
possible  :  it  will  be  a  boon  for  humanity  ;  for 
humanity,  of  course — not  for  a  single  nation, 
because  knowledge  cannot  be  cultivated  for  home 
use  only.  Knowledge  and  invention,  boldness 
of  thought  and  enterprise,  conquests  of  genius 
and  improvements  of  social  organisation  have 
become  international  growths  ;  and  no  kind  of 
progress — intellectual,  industrial  or  social — can 
be  kept  within  political  boundaries  ;  it  crosses 
the  seas,  it  pierces  the  mountains  ;  steppes  are 
no  obstacle  to  it.  Knowledge  and  inventive 
powers  are  now  so  thoroughly  international 
that  if  a  simple  newspaper  paragraph  announces 
to-morrow  that  the  problem  of  storing  force,  of 
printing  without  inking,  or  of  aerial  navigation, 
has  received  a  practical  solution  in  one  country 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


81 


of  the  world,  we  may  feel  sure  that  within  a  few 
weeks  the  same  problem  will  be  solved,  almost  in 
the  same  way,  by  several  inventors  of  different 
nationalities.*  Continually  we  learn  that  the 
same  scientific  discovery,  or  technical  invention, 
has  been  made  within  a  few  days’  distance,  in 
countries  a  thousand  miles  apart  ;  as  if  there 
were  a  kind  of  atmosphere  which  favours  the 
germination  of  a  given  idea  at  a  given  moment. 
And  such  an  atmosphere  exists  :  steam,  print 
and  the  common  stock  of  knowledge  have 
created  it. 

Those  who  dream  of  monopolising  technical 
genius  are  therefore  fifty  years  behind  the ) 
times.  The  world — the  wide,  wide  world — id 
now  the  true  domain  of  knowledge  ;  and  if  each 
nation  displays  some  special  capacities  in  some 
special  branch,  the  various  capacities  of  different 
nations  compensate  one  another,  and  the  ad¬ 
vantages  which  could  be  derived  from  them 
would  be  only  temporary.  The  fine  British 
workmanship  in  mechanical  arts,  the  American 
boldness  for  gigantic  enterprise,  the  French 
systematic  mind,  and  the  German  pedagogy,  are 
becoming  international  capacities.  Sir  William 
Armstrong,  in  his  works  established  in  Italy 
and  Japan,  has  already  communicated  to  Italians 

I  leave  these  lines  on  purpose  as  they  were  written  for 
the  first  edition  of  this  book. 


82 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


and  Japanese  those  capacities  for  managing  huge 
iron  masses  which  have  been  nurtured  on  the 
Tyne  ;  the  uproarious  American  spirit  of  enter¬ 
prise  pervades  the  Old  World  ;  the  French  taste 
for  harmony  becomes  European  taste  ;  and 
German  pedagogy — improved,  I  dare  say — is 
at  home  in  Russia.  So,  instead  of  trying  to  keep 
life  in  the  old  channels,  it  would  be  better  to  see 
what  the  new  conditions  are,  what  duties  they 
impose  on  our  generation. 

The  characters  of  the  new  conditions  are  plain, 
and  their  consequences  are  easy  to  understand. 
As  the  manufacturing  nations  of  West  Europe 
are  meeting  with  steadily  growing  difficulties 
in  selling  their  manufactured  goods  abroad,  and 
getting  food  in  exchange,  they  will  be  compelled 
to  grow  their  food  at  home  ;  they  will  be  bound 
to  rely  on  home  customers  for  their  manufac¬ 
tures,  and  on  home  producers  for  their  food. 
And  the  sooner  they  do  so  the  better. 

Two  great  objections  stand,  however,  in  the 
way  against  the  general  acceptance  of  such 
conclusions.  We  have  been  taught,  both  by 
economists  and  politicians,  that  the  territories 
of  the  West  European  States  are  so  overcrowded 
with  inhabitants  that  they  cannot  grow  all  the 
food  and  raw  produce  which  are  necessary  for 
the  maintenance  of  their  steadily  increasing 
populations.  Therefore  the  necessity  of  ex- 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


83 


porting  manufactured  goods  and  of  importing 
food.  And  we  are  told,  moreover,  that  even 
if  it  were  possible  to  grow  in  Western  Europe 
all  the  food  necessary  for  its  inhabitants,  there 
would  be  no  advantage  in  doing  so  as  long  as  the 
same  food  can  be  got  cheaper  from  abroad. 
Such  are  the  present  teachings  and  the  ideas 
which  are  current  in  society  at  large.  And  yet 
it  is  easy  to  prove  that  both  are  totally  erroneous  : 
plenty  of  food  could  be  grown  on  the  territories 
of  Western  Europe  for  much  more  than  their 
present  populations,  and  an  immense  benefit 
would  be  derived  from  doing  so.  These  are  the 
two  points  which  I  have  now  to  discuss. 

To  begin  by  taking  the  most  disadvantageous 
case  :  is  it  possible  that  the  soil  of  Great  Britain, 
which  at  present  yields  food  for  one-third  only 
of  its  inhabitants,  could  provide  all  the  necessary 
amount  and  variety  of  food  for  41,000,000 
human  beings  when  it  covers  only  56,000,000 
acres  all  told — forests  and  rocks,  marshes  and 
peat-bogs,  cities,  railways  and  fields — out  of 
which  only  33,000,000  acres  are  considered  as 
cultivable  ?  *  The  current  opinion  is,  that  it  by 

*  Twenty-three  per  cent,  of  the  total  area  of  England,  40 
per  cent,  in  Wales,  and  75  per  cent,  in  Scotland  are  now  under 
wood,  coppice,  mountain  heath,  water,  etc.  The  remainder — 
that  is,  32,777,513  acres — which  were  under  culture  and  per¬ 
manent  pasture  in  the  year  1890  (only  32,094,658  in  1911), 
may  be  taken  as  the  “  cultivable  ”  area  of  Great  Britain. 


84 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


no  means  can  ;  and  that  opinion  is  so  inveterate 
that  we  even  see  men  of  science,  who  are  generally 
cautious  when  dealing  with  current  opinions, 
endorse  that  opinion  without  even  taking  the 
trouble  of  verifying  it.  It  is  accepted  as  an 
axiom.  And  yet,  as  soon  as  we  try  to  find  out  any 
argument  in  its  favour,  we  discover  that  it  has 
not  the  slightest  foundation,  either  in  facts  or 
in  judgment  based  upon  well-known  facts. 

Let  us  take,  for  instance,  J.  B.  Lawes’  esti¬ 
mates  of  crops  which  were  published  every  year 
in  The  Times.  In  his  estimate  of  the  year  1887 
he  made  the  remark  that  during  the  eight 
harvest  years  1853-1860  “  nearly  three-fourths 
of  the  aggregate  amount  of  wheat  consumed  in 
the  United  Kingdom  was  of  home  growth,  and 
little  more  than  one-fourth  was  derived  from 
foreign  sources  ”  ;  but  five- and- twenty  years 
later  the  figures  were  almost  reversed — that  is, 
“during  the  eight  years  1879-1886,  little 
more  than  one-third  has  been  provided  by  home 
crops  and  nearly  two-thirds  by  imports.”  But 
neither  the  increase  of  population  by  8,000,000 
nor  the  increase  of  consumption  of  wheat  by 
six-tenths  of  a  bushel  per  head  could  account 
for  the  change.  In  the  years  1853-1860  the  soil 
of  Britain  nourished  one  inhabitant  on  every 
two  acres  cultivated  :  why  did  it  require  three 
acres  in  order  to  nourish  the  same  inhabitant 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


85 


in  1887  ?  The  answer  is  plain  :  merely  and 
simply  because  agriculture  had  fallen  into 
neglect. 

In  fact,  the  area  under  wheat  had  been 
reduced  since  1853-1860  by  full  1,590,000  acres, 
and  therefore  the  average  crop  of  the  years 
1883-1886  was  below  the  average  crop  of 
1853-1860  by  more  than  40,000,000  bushels  ; 
and  this  deficit  alone  represented  the  food  of 
more  than  7,000,000  inhabitants.  At  the  same 
time  the  area  under  barley,  oats,  beans,  and 
other  spring  crops  had  also  been  reduced  by  a 
further  560,000  acres,  which,  alone,  at  the  low 
average  of  thirty  bushels  per  acre,  would  have 
represented  the  cereals  necessary  to  complete 
the  above,  for  the  same  7,000,000  inhabitants. 
It  can  thus  be  said  that  if  the  United  Kingdom 
imported  cereals  for  17,000,000  inhabitants  in 
1887,  instead  of  for  10,000,000  in  1860,  it  was 
simply  because  more  than  2,000,000  acres  had 
gone  out  of  cultivation.* 

These  facts  are  well  known  ;  but  usually  they 

*  Average  area  under  wheat  in  1853-1860,  4,092,160  acres ; 
average  crop,  14,310,779  quarters.  Average  area  under  wheat 
in  1884-1887,  2,509,055  acres ;  average  crop  (good  years), 
9,198,956  quarters.  See  Professor  W.  Fream’s  Rothamstead 
Experiments  (London,  1888),  page  83.  I  take  in  the  above  Sir 
John  Lawes’  figure  of  5*65  bushels  per  head  of  population 
every  year.  It  is  very  close  to  the  yearly  allowance  of  5-67 
bushels  of  the  French  statisticians.  The  Russian  statisticians 
reckon  5*67  bushels  of  winter  crops  (chiefly  rye)  and  2‘5  bushels 
of  spring  crops  (sarrazin,  barley,  etc.). 

/ 


86 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


are  met  with  the  remark  that  the  character 
of  agriculture  had  been  altered  :  that  instead  of 
growing  wheat,  meat  and  milk  were  produced  in 
this  country.  However,  the  figures  for  1887, 
compared  with  the  figures  for  1860,  show  that 
the  same  downward  movement  took  place 
under  the  heads  of  green  crops  and  the  like.  The 
area  under  potatoes  was  reduced  by  280,000 
acres  ;  under  turnips  by  180,000  acres  ;  and 
although  there  was  an  increase  under  the  heads 
of  mangold,  carrots,  etc.,  still  the  aggregate 
area  under  all  these  crops  was  reduced  by  a 
further  330,000  acres.  An  increase  of  area 
was  found  only  for  permanent  pasture  (2,800,000 
acres)  and  grass  under  rotation  (1,600,000 
acres)  ;  but  we  should  look  in  vain  for  a  cor¬ 
responding  increase  of  live  stock.  The  increase 
of  live  stock  which  took  place  during  those 
twenty-seven  years  was  not  sufficient  to  cover 
even  the  area  reclaimed  from  waste  land.* 

Since  the  year  1887  affairs  went,  however, 
from  worse  to  worse.  If  we  take  Great  Britain 

*  There  was  an  increase  of  1,800,000  head  of  horned  cattle, 
and  a  decrease  of  4|  million  sheep  (G|  millions,  if  we  compare 
the  year  1886  with  1868),  which  would  correspond  to  an  in¬ 
crease  of  1J  million  of  units  of  cattle,  because  eight  sheep  are 
reckoned  as  equivalent  to  one  head  of  horned  cattle.  But  five 
million  acres  having  been  reclaimed  upon  waste  land  since 
1860,  the  above  increase  should  hardly  do  for  covering  that 
area,  so  that  the  million  acres  which  were  cultivated  no 
longer  remained  fully  uncovered.  They  were  a  pure  loss  to 
the  nation. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


87 


alone,  we  see  that  in  1885  the  area  under  all 
corn  crops  was  8,392,006  acres  ;  that  is  very 
small,  indeed,  in  comparison  to  the  area  which 
could  have  been  cultivated ;  but  even  that 
little  was  further  reduced  to  7,400,227  acres  in 
1895.  The  area  under  wheat  was  2,478,318 
acres  in  1885  (as  against  3,630,300  in  1874)  ;  but 
it  dwindled  away  to  1,417,641  acres  in  1895, 
while  the  area  under  the  other  cereals  increased 
by  a  trifle  only — from  5,198,026  acres  to 
5,462,184 — the  total  loss  on  all  cereals  being 
nearly  1,000,000  acres  in  ten  years  !  Another 
5,000,000  people  were  thus  compelled  to  get 
their  food  from  abroad. 

Did  the  area  under  green  crops  increase  cor¬ 
respondingly,  as  it  would  have  done  if  it  were 
only  the  character  of  agriculture  that  had 
changed  ?  Not  in  the  least !  This  area  was 
further  reduced  by  nearly  500,000  acres 
(3,521,602  in  1885,  3,225,762  in  1895,  and 
3,006,000  in  1909-1911).  Or  was  the  area  under 
clover  and  grasses  in  rotation  increased  in 
proportion  to  all  these  reductions  ?  Alas  no  ! 
It  also  was  reduced  (4,654,173  acres  in  1885, 
4,729,801  in  1895,  and  4,164,000  acres  in  1909- 
1911).  In  short,  taking  all  the  land  that  is 
under  crops  in  rotation  (17,201,490  acres  in 
1885,  16,166,950  acres  in  1895,  14,795,570  only 
in  1905,  and  14,682,550  in  1909-1911),  we  see 


88 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


that  within  the  last  twenty-six  years  another 
2,500,000  acres  went  out  of  cultivation,  without 
any  compensation  whatever.  It  went  to  increase 
that  already  enormous  area  of  more  than 
17,000,000  acres  (17,460,000  in  1909-1911)— 
more  than  one-half  of  the  cultivable  area — which 
goes  under  the  head  of  “  permanent  pasture,” 
and  hardly  suffices  to  feed  one  cow  on  each 
three  acres ! 

Need  I  say,  after  that,  that  quite  to  the 
contrary  of  what  we  are  told  about  the  British 
agriculturists  becoming  “  meat-makers  ”  instead 
of  “  wheat-growers,”  no  corresponding  increase 
of  live  stock  took  place  during  the  last  twenty - 
five  years.  Far  from  devoting  the  land  freed 
from  cereals  to  “  meat-making,”  the  country 
further  reduced  its  live  stock  in  1885-1895, 
and  began  to  show  a  slight  increase  during 
the  last  few  years  only.  It  had  6,597,964 
head  of  horned  cattle  in  1885,  6,354,336  in 
1895,  and  7,057,520  in  1909-1911  ;  26,534,600 
sheep  in  1885,  25,792,200  in  1895,  and  from 
26,500,000  to  27,610,000  in  1909-1911.  True, 
the  number  of  horses  increased  ;  every  butcher 
and  greengrocer  runs  now  a  horse  “  to  take 
orders  at  the  gents’  doors  ”  (in  Sweden 
and  Switzerland,  by  the  way,  they  do  it  by 
telephone).  But  if  we  take  the  numbers  of 
horses  used  in  agriculture,  unbroken,  and  kept 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


89 


for  breeding,  we  find  only  small  oscillations 
between  1,408,790  in  1885  and  1,553,000  in 
1909.  But  numbers  of  horses  are  imported,  as 
also  the  oats  and  a  considerable  amount  of  the  hay 
that  is  required  for  feeding  them.*  And  if  the 
consumption  of  meat  has  really  increased  in  this 
country,  it  is  due  to  cheap  imported  meat,  not 
to  the  meat  that  would  be  produced  in  these 
islands,  f 

In  short,  agriculture  has  not  changed  its  di¬ 
rection,  as  we  are  often  told  ;  it  simply  went 
down  in  all  directions.  Land  is  going  out  of  cul¬ 
ture  at  a  perilous  rate,  while  the  latest  improve¬ 
ments  in  market-gardening,  fruit-growing  and 
poultry-keeping  are  but  a  mere  trifle  if  we  com¬ 
pare  them  with  what  has  been  done  in  the  same 
direction  in  France,  Belgium  and  America. 

*  According  to  a  report  read  by  Mr.  Crawford  before  the 
Statistical  Society  in  October,  1899,  Britain  imports  every  year 
4,500,000  tons  of  hay  and  other  food  for  its  cattle  and  horses. 
Under  the  present  system  of  culture,  6,000,000  acres  could 
produce  these  food-stuffs.  If  another  6,000,000  acres  were  sown 
with  cereals,  all  the  wheat  required  for  the  United  Kingdom 
could  have  been  produced  at  home  with  the  methods  of  culture 
now  in  use. 

f  No  less  than  5,877,000  cwts.  of  beef  and  mutton,  1,065,470 
sheep  and  lambs,  and  415,565  pieces  of  cattle  were  imported 
in  1895.  In  1910  the  first  of  these  figures  rose  to  13,690,000 
cwts.  Altogether,  it  is  calculated  ( Statesman's  Y ear-book,  1912) 
that,  in  1910,  21  lb.  of  imported  beef,  13£  lb.  of  imported 
mutton,  and  7  lb.  of  other  sorts  of  meat,  per  head  of  popula¬ 
tion,  were  retained  for  home  consumption  ;  in  addition  to  1 1  lb. 
of  butter,  262  lb.  of  wheat,  25  lb.  of  flour,  and  20  lb.  of  rice 
and  rice-flour,  imported. 


90 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


It  must  be  said  that  during  the  last  few  years 
there  was  a  slight  improvement.  The  area  under 
all  corn  crops  was  slightly  increasing,  and  it 
fluctuated  about  7,000,000  acres,  the  increase 
being  especially  notable  for  wheat  (1,906,000 
acres  in  1911  as  against  1,625,450  in  1907), 
while  the  areas  under  barley  and  oats  were 
slightly  diminished.  But  with  all  that,  the 
surface  under  corn  crops  is  still  nearly  one-and- 
a-half  million  acres  below  what  it  was  in  1885, 
and  nearly  two-and-a-half  million  acres  below 
1874.  This  represents,  let  us  remember  it,  the 
bread-food  of  ten  million  people. 

The  cause  of  this  general  downward  movement 
is  self-evident.  It  is  the  desertion,  the  abandon¬ 
ment  of  the  land.  Each  crop  requiring  human 
labour  has  had  its  area  reduced  ;  and  almost 
one-half  of  the  agricultural  labourers  have  been 
sent  away  since  1861  to  reinforce  the  ranks  of  the 
unemployed  in  the  cities,*  so  that  far  from 
being  over-populated,  the  fields  of  Britain  are 
starved  of  human  labour ,  as  James  Caird  used  to 
say.  The  British  nation  does  not  work  on  her 
soil ;  she  is  prevented  from  doing  so  ;  and  the 
would-be  economists  complain  that  the  soil 
will  not  nourish  its  inhabitants  ! 

*  Agricultural  population  (farmers  and  labourers)  in  Eng¬ 
land  and  Wales :  2,100,000  in  1861  ;  1,383,000  in  1884 ; 

1,311,720  in  1891 ;  1,152,500  (including  fishing  population)  in 
1901. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


91 


I  once  took  a  knapsack  and  went  on  foot  out 
of  London,  through  Sussex.  I  had  read  Leonce 
de  Lavergne’s  work  and  expected  to  find  a  soil 
busily  cultivated  ;  but  neither  round  London 
nor  still  less  further  south  did  I  see  men  in  the 
fields.  In  the  Weald  I  could  walk  for  twenty 
miles  without  crossing  anything  but  heath  or 
woodlands,  rented  as  pheasant-shooting  grounds 
to  “  London  gentlemen,”  as  the  labourers  said. 
“  Ungrateful  soil  ”  was  my  first  thought  ;  but 
then  I  would  occasionally  come  to  a  farm  at  the 
crossing  of  two  roads  and  see  the  same  soil 
bearing  a  rich  crop  ;  and  my  - next  thought  was 
tel  seigneur ,  telle  terre ,  as  the  French  peasants 
say.  Later  on  I  saw  the  rich  fields  of  the  midland 
counties  ;  but  even  there  I  was  struck  by  not 
perceiving  the  same  busy  human  labour  which 
I  was  accustomed  to  admire  on  the  Belgian 
and  French  fields.  But  I  ceased  to  wonder  when 
I  learnt  that  only  1,383,000  men  and  women 
in  England  and  Wales  work  in  the  fields,  while 
more  than  16,000,000  belong  to  the  “  professional, 
domestic,  indefinite,  and  unproductive  class,” 
as  these  pitiless  statisticians  say.  One  million 
human  beings  cannot  productively  cultivate 
an  area  of  33,000,000  acres,  unless  they  can 
resort  to  the  Bonanza  farm’s  methods  of  culture. 

Again,  taking  Harrow  as  the  centre  of  my 
excursions,  I  could  walk  five  miles  towards  Lon- 


92 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


don,  or  turning  my  back  upon  it,  and  I  could  see 
nothing  east  or  west  but  meadow  land  on  which 
they  hardly  cropped  two  tons  of  hay  per  acre — 
scarcely  enough  to  keep  alive  one  milch  cow 
on  each  two  acres.  Man  is  conspicuous  by  his 
absence  from  those  meadows  ;  he  rolls  them 
with  a  heavy  roller  in  the  spring  ;  he  spreads 
some  manure  every  two  or  three  years  ;  then 
he  disappears  until  the  time  has  come  to  make 
hay.  And  that — within  ten  miles  from  Charing 
Cross,  close  to  a  city  with  5,000,000  inhabitants, 
supplied  with  Flemish  and  Jersey  potatoes, 
French  salads  and  Canadian  apples.  In  the 
hands  of  the  Paris  gardeners,  each  thousand 
acres  situated  within  the  same  distance  from  the 
city  would  be  cultivated  by  at  least  2,000  human 
beings,  who  would  get  vegetables  to  the  value  of 
from  £50  to  £300  per  acre.  Bub  here  the  acres 
which  only  need  human  hands  to  become  an 
inexhaustible  source  of  golden  crops  lie  idle,  and 
they  say  to  us,  44  Heavy  clay  !  ”  without  even 
knowing  that  in  the  hands  of  man  there  are  no 
unfertile  soils  ;  that  the  most  fertile  soils  are 

i 

not  in  the  prairies  of  America,  nor  in  the  Russian 
steppes  ;  that  they  are  in  the  peat-bogs  of  Ire¬ 
land,  on  the  sand  downs  of  the  northern  sea- 
coast  of  France,  on  the  craggy  mountains  of  the 
Rhine,  where  they  have  been  made  by  man’s 
hands. 


OF  AGRICULTURE 


93 


The  most  striking  fact  is,  however,  that  in 
some  undoubtedly  fertile  parts  of  the  country 
things  are  even  in  a  worse  condition.  My  heart 
simply  ached  when  I  saw  the  state  in  which 
land  is  kept  in  South  Devon,  and  when  I  learned 
to  know  what  “  permanent  pasture  ”  means. 
Field  after  field  is  covered  with  nothing  but 
grass,  three  inches  high,  and  thistles  in  profusion. 
Twenty,  thirty  such  fields  can  be  seen  at  one 
glance  from  the  top  of  every  hill ;  and  thousands 
of  acres  are  in  that  state,  notwithstanding  that 
the  grandfathers  of  the  present  generation  have 
devoted  a  formidable  amount  of  labour  to  the 
clearing  of  that  land  from  the  stones,  to  fencing 
it,  roughly  draining  it  and  the  like.  In  every 
direction  I  could  see  abandoned  cottages  and 
orchards  going  to  ruin.  A  whole  population  has 
disappeared,  and  even  its  last  vestiges  must 
disappear  if  things  continue  to  go  on  as  they 
have  gone.  And  this  takes  place  in  a  part 
of  the  country  endowed  with  a  most  fertile 
soil  and  possessed  of  a  climate  which  is 
certainly  more  congenial  than  the  climate  of 
Jersey  in  spring  and  early  summer  —  a  land 
upon  which  even  the  poorest  cottagers  occa¬ 
sionally  raise  potatoes  as  early  as  the  first 
half  of  May.  But  how  can  that  land  be  culti¬ 
vated  when  there  is  nobody  to  cultivate  it  ? 
“  We  have  fields  ;  men  go  by,  but  never  go 


94  THE  POSSIBILITIES 

in,”  an  old  labourer  said  to  me  ;  and  so  it  is 
in  reality.* 

Such  were  my  impressions  of  British  agricul¬ 
ture  twenty  years  ago.  Unfortunately,  both  the 
official  statistical  data  and  the  mass  of  private 
evidence  published  since  tend  to  show  that  but 
little  improvement  took  place  in  the  general 
conditions  of  agriculture  in  this  country  within 
the  last  twenty  years.  Some  successful  attempts 
in  various  new  directions  have  been  made  in 
different  parts  of  the  country,  and  I  will  have  the 
pleasure  to  mention  them  further  on,  the  more 
so  as  they  show  what  a  quite  average  soil  in  these 
islands  can  give  when  it  is  properly  treated. 
But  over  large  areas,  especially  in  the  southern 
counties,  the  general  conditions  are  even  worse 
than  they  were  twenty  years  ago. 

Altogether  one  cannot  read  the  mass  of  review 
and  newspaper  articles,  and  books  dealing  with 

*  Round  the  small  hamlet  where  I  stayed  for  two  summers, 
there  were  :  One  farm,  370  acres,  four  labourers  and  two  boys  ; 
another,  about  300  acres,  two  men  and  two  boys ;  a  third, 
800  acres,  five  men  only  and  probably  as  many  boys.  In 
truth,  the  problem  of  cultivating  the  land  with  the  least  number 
of  men  has  been  solved  in  this  spot  by  not  cultivating  at  all 
as  much  as  two-thirds  of  it.  Since  these  lines  were  written,  in 
1890,  a  movement  in  favour  of  intensive  market-gardening  has 
bogun  in  this  country,  and  I  read  in  November,  1909,  that  they 
were  selling  at  the  Covent  Garden  market  asparagus  that  had 
been  grown  in  South  Devon  in  November.  They  begin  also  to 
grow  early  potatoes  in  Cornwall  and  Devon.  Formerly,  no¬ 
body  thought  of  utilising  this  rich  soil  and  warm  climate  for 
growing  early  vegetables. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


95 


British  agriculture  that  have  been  published 
lately,  without  realising  that  the  agricultural 
depression  which  began  in  the  “  seventies  ”  and 
the  “  eighties  ”  of  the  nineteenth  century  had 
causes  much  more  deeply  seated  than  the  fall 
in  the  prices  of  wheat  in  consequence  of  American 
competition.  However,  it  would  lie  beyond  the 
scope  of  this  book  to  enter  here  into  such  a  dis¬ 
cussion.  Moreover,  anyone  who  will  read  a  few 
review  articles  written  from  the  points  of  view 
of  different  parties,  or  consult  such  books  as 
that  of  Mr.  Christopher  Turnor,*  or  study  the 
elaborate  inquest  made  by  Rider  Haggard  in 
twenty-six  counties  of  England — paying  more 
attention  to  the  data  accumulated  in  this  book 
than  to  the  sometimes  biassed  conclusions  of  the 
author — will  soon  see  himself  what  are  the  causes 
which  hamper  the  development  of  British  agri- 
culture.*)* 

In  Scotland  the  conditions  are  equally  bad. 
The  population  described  as  “  rural  ”  is  in  a 
steady  decrease  :  in  1911  it  was  already  less 
than  800,000  ;  and  as  regards  the  agricultural 
labourers,  their  number  has  decreased  by  42,370 
(from  135,970  to  93,600)  in  the  twenty  years, 
1881  to  1901.  The  land  goes  out  of  culture , 
while  the  area  under  “  deer  forests  ” — that  is, 

*  Land  Problems  and  National  Welfare ,  London,  1911. 

t  Rural  England ,  two  big  volumes,  London,  1902. 


96 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


under  hunting  grounds  established  upon  what 
formerly  was  arable  land  for  the  amusement  of 
the  rich — increases  at  an  appalling  rate.  No 
need  to  say  that  at  the  same  time  the  Scotch 
population  is  emigrating,  and  Scotland  is  de¬ 
populated  at  an  appalling  speed. 

My  chief  purpose  being  to  show  here  what  can 
and  ought  to  be  obtained  from  the  land  under  a 
proper  and  intelligent  treatment,  I  shall  only 
indicate  one  of  the  disadvantages  of  the  systems 
of  husbandry  in  vogue  in  this  country.  Both 
landlords  and  farmers  gradually  came  of  late 
to  pursue  other  aims  than  that  of  obtaining 
from  the  land  the  greatest  amount  of  produce 
than  can  be  obtained  ;  and  when  this  problem 
of  a  maximum  productivity  of  the  land  arose 
before  the  European  nations,  and  therefore  a 
complete  modification  of  the  methods  of  hus¬ 
bandry  was  rendered  imperative,  such  a  modifi¬ 
cation  was  not  accomplished  in  this  country. 
While  in  France,  Belgium,  Germany  and  Den¬ 
mark  the  agriculturists  did  their  best  to  meet 
the  effects  of  American  competition  by  render¬ 
ing  their  culture  more  intensive  in  all  directions, 
in  this  country  the  already  antiquated  method 
of  reducing  the  area  under  corn  crops  and  lay¬ 
ing  land  for  grass  continues  to  prevail,  although 
it  ought  to  be  evident  that  mere  grazing  will 
pay  no  more,  and  that  some  effort  in  the  right 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


97 


direction  would  increase  the  returns  of  the  corn 
crops,  as  also  those  of  the  roots  and  plants 
cultivated  for  industrial  purposes.  The  land 
continues  to  go  out  of  culture,  while  the 
problem  of  the  day  is  to  render  culture  more 
and  more  intensive. 

Many  causes  have  combined  to  produce  that 
undesirable  result.  The  concentration  of  land- 
ownership  in  the  hands  of  big  landowners  ;  the 
high  profits  obtained  previously  ;  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  a  class  of  both  landlords  and  farmers 
who  rely  chiefly  upon  other  incomes  than  those 
they  draw  from  the  land,  and  for  whom  farming 
has  thus  become  a  sort  of  pleasant  by-occupation 
or  sport ;  the  rapid  development  of  game  reserves 
for  sportsmen,  both  British  and  foreign  ;  the 
absence  of  men  of  initiative  who  would  have 
shown  to  the  nation  the  necessity  of  a  new 
departure  ;  the  absence  of  a  desire  to  win  the 
necessary  knowledge,  and  the  absence  of  in¬ 
stitutions  which  could  widely  spread  practical 
agricultural  knowledge  and  introduce  improved 
seeds  and  seedlings,  as  the  Experimental  Farms 
of  the  United  States  and  Canada  are  doing ; 
the  dislike  of  that  spirit  of  agricultural  co¬ 
operation  to  which  the  Danish  farmers  owe  their 
successes,  and  so  on — all  these  stand  in  the  way 
of  the  unavoidable  change  in  the  methods  of 
farming,  and  produce  the  results  of  which  the 


98 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


British  writers  on  agriculture  are  complaining.* 
But  it  is  self-evident  that  in  order  to  compete 
with  countries  where  machinery  is  largely  used 
and  new  methods  of  farming  are  resorted  to 
(including  the  industrial  treatment  of  farm 
produce  in  sugar  works,  starch  works,  and  the 
drying  of  vegetables,  etc.,  connected  with  farm¬ 
ing),  the  old  methods  cannot  do ;  especially 
when  the  farmer  has  to  pay  a  rent  of  twenty, 
forty,  and  occasionally  fifty  shillings  per  acre 
for  wheat-lands. 

It  may  be  said,  of  course,  that  this  opinion 
strangely  contrasts  with  the  well-known  superi¬ 
ority  of  British  agriculture.  Do  we  not  know, 
indeed,  that  British  crops  average  twenty-eight 
to  thirty  bushels  of  wheat  per  acre,  while  in 
France  they  reach  only  from  seventeen  to  twenty 
bushels  ?  Does  it  not  stand  in  all  almanacs 
that  Britain  gets  every  year  £200,000,000 
sterling  worth  of  animal  produce — milk,  cheese, 
meat  and  wool — from  her  fields  ?  All  that  is 
true,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  in  many  respects 
British  agriculture  is  superior  to  that  of  many 
other  nations.  As  regards  obtaining  the  greatest 
amount  of  produce  with  the  least  amount  of 
labour,  Britain  undoubtedly  took  the  lead  until 

*  See  H.  Rider  Haggard’s  Rural  Denmark  and  its  Lessons, 
London,  1911,  pp,  188-212. 


99 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 

she  was  superseded  by  America  in  the  Bonanza 
farms  (now  disappeared  or  rapidly  disappearing). 
Again,  as  regards  the  fine  breeds  of  cattle,  the 
splendid  state  of  the  meadows  and  the  results 
obtained  in  separate  farms,  there  is  much  to  be 
learned  from  Britain.  But  a  closer  acquaintance 
with  British  agriculture  as  a  whole  discloses 
many  features  of  inferiority. 

However  splendid,  a  meadow  remains  a 
meadow,  much  inferior  in  productivity  to  a  corn¬ 
field  ;  and  the  fine  breeds  of  cattle  appear  to  be 
poor  creatures  as  long  as  each  ox  requires  three 
acres  of  land  to  be  fed  upon.  As  regards  the 
crops,  certainly  one  may  indulge  in  some  admira¬ 
tion  at  the  average  twenty-eight  or  thirty  bushels 
grown  in  this  country  ;  but  when  we  learn  that 
only  1,600,000  to  1,900,000  acres  out  of  the 
cultivable  33,000,000  bear  such  crops,  we  are 
quite  disappointed.  Anyone  could  obtain  like 
results  if  he  were  to  put  all  his  manure  into  one- 
twentieth  part  of  the  area  which  he  possesses. 
Again,  the  twenty-eight  to  thirty  bushels  no 
longer  appear  to  us  so  satisfactory  when  we  learn 
that  without  any  manuring,  merely  by  means  of 
a  good  culture,  they  have  obtained  at  Rotham- 
stead  an  average  of  1 4  bushels  per  acre  from  the 
same  plot  of  land  for  forty  consecutive  years  ;  * 

*  The  Rothamstead  Experiments,  1888,  by  Professor  W. 
Fream,  p.  35  seq.  It  ia  well  worth  noting  that  Mr.  Hall,  who 


100 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


while  Mr.  Prout,  in  his  farm  near  Sawbridge- 
worth  (Herts),  on  a  cold  heavy  clay,  has  obtained 
since  1861  crops  of  from  thirty  to  thirty-eight 
bushels  of  wheat,  year  after  year,  without  any 
farm  manure  at  all,  by  good  steam  ploughing 
and  artificial  manure  only.  (R.  Haggard,  I.  528.) 
Under  the  allotment  system  the  crops  reach 
forty  bushels.  In  some  farms  they  occasionally 
attain  even  fifty  and  fifty-seven  bushels  per  acre. 

If  we  intend  to  have  a  correct  appreciation 
of  British  agriculture,  we  must  not  base  it  upon 
what  is  obtained  on  a  few  selected  and  well- 
manured  plots  ;  we  must  inquire  what  is  done 
with  the  territory,  taken  as  a  whole.*  Now, 

was  the  head  of  Rothamstead  for  many  years,  maintained  from 
his  own  experience  that  growing  wheat  in  England  is  more 
profitable  than  rearing  live  stock.  The  same  opinion  was  often 
expressed  by  the  experts  whose  testimonies  are  reproduced  by 
Rider  Haggard.  In  many  places  of  his  Rural  England  one  finds 
also  a  mention  of  high  wheat  crops,  up  to  fifty-six  bushels 
per  acre,  obtained  in  many  places  in  this  country. 

*  The  figures  which  I  take  for  these  calculations  are  given 
in  Agricultural  Returns  of  the  Board  of  Agriculture  and  Agricul¬ 
tural  Statistics  for  1911,  vol.  xlvi.,  pt.  1.  They  are  as  follows 
for  the  year  1910  : — 

Acres. 

Total  area  (Great  Britain)  .  .  .  56,803,000 

Uncultivable  area  .  24,657,070 

(23,680,000 
in  1895) 

Cultivable  area .  32,145,930 

Out  of  it,  under  the  plough  .  .  .  14,668,890 
Out  of  it,  under  permanent  pasture  17,477,040 

(During  the  last  ten  years,  since  the  census  of  1901,  the  culti¬ 
vable  area  decreased  by  323,000  acres,  while  the  urban  area 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


101 


out  of  each  1,000  acres  of  the  aggregate  territory 
of  England,  Wales  and  Scotland,  435  acres  are 
left  under  wood,  coppice,  heath,  buildings,  and 
so  on.  We  need  not  find  fault  with  that  division, 
because  it  depends  very  much  upon  natural 
causes.  In  France  and  Belgium  one-third  of  the 
territory  is  in  like  manner  also  treated  as  un- 
cultivable,  although  portions  of  it  are  continually 


increased  by  166,710  acres,  thus  reaching  now  4,015,700  acres. 
Since  1901,  942,000  acres  were  withdrawn  from  the  plough, 
661,000  acres  in  England,  158,000  in  Wales,  and  123,000  in 
Scotland.) 

The  distribution  of  the  area  which  is  actually  under  the 
plough  between  the  various  crops  varies  considerably  from 
year  to  year.  Taking  1910  (an  average  year)  we  have  the 
following  : — 


Acres. 

Corn  crops . 

7,045,530 

Clover  and  mature  grasses  . 

4,157,040 

Green  crops  and  orchards 

2,994,890 

Hops . 

32,890 

Small  fruit . 

84,310 

Flax . 

230 

Bare  fallow,  etc . 

354,000 

Total  under  culture  (including  that 

part  of  permanent  pasture  which 

gives  hay) . 

14,668,890 

(In  1901  . 

15,610,890) 

(In  1895  . 

16,166,950) 

Out  of  the  7,045,530  acres  given  to  corn  crops,  1,808,850 
acres  were  under  wheat  (nearly  200,000  acres  less  than  in  1 899 
and  100,000  acres  less  than  in  19l  1 ),  1,728,680  acres  under 
barley  (only  1,597,930  in  1911),  3,020,970  acres  under  oats, 
about  300,000  under  beans,  and  about  52,000  acres  under  rye 
and  buckwheat.  From  540,000  to  570,000  acres  were  given  to 
potatoes.  The  area  under  clover  and  sown  grasses  is  steadily 
declining  since  1898,  when  it  was  4,911,000  acres. 


/T ,  a'v 

XL 

f 

•  •»/  c 

i.  /  1 

*  A"l 

#  1 

Fig.  i. — Proportion  of  the  cultivated  area  which  is  given  to 
cereals  altogether,  and  to  wheat,  in  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland. 


103 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 

reclaimed  and  brought  under  culture.  Rut, 
leaving  aside  the  “  uncultivable  ”  portion,  let  us 
see  what  is  done  with  the  565  acres  out  of  1,000 
of  the  “cultivable”  part  (32,145,930  acres  in 
Great  Britain  in  1910).  First  of  all,  it  is  divided 
into  two  parts,  and  one  of  them,  the  largest— 
308  acres  out  of  1,000— is  left  under  “  permanent 
pasture,”  that  is,  in  most  cases  it  is  entirely 
uncultivated.  Very  little  hay  is  obtained  from 
it,*  and  some  cattle  are  grazed  upon  it.  More 
than  one-half  of  the  cultivable  area  is  thus  left 
without  cultivation,  and  only  257  acres  out  of 
each  1,000  acres  are  under  culture.  Out  of  these 
last,  124  acres  are  under  corn  crops,  twenty-one 
acres  under  potatoes,  fifty-three  acres  under 
green  crops,  and  seventy-three  acres  under  clover 
fields  and  grasses  under  rotation.  And  finally, 
out  of  the  124  acres  given  to  com  crops,  the  best 
thirty-three,  and  some  years  only  twenty-five 
acres  (one-fortieth  part  of  the  territory,  one- 
twenty-third  of  the  cultivable  area),  are  picked 
out  and  sown  with  wheat.  They  are  well  culti¬ 
vated,  well  manured,  and  upon  them  an  average 
of  from  twenty-eight  to  thirty  bushels  to  the 
acre  is  obtained  ;  and  upon  these  twenty-five 
or  thirty  acres  out  of  1,000  the  world  superiority 
of  British  agriculture  is  based. 

*  Only  from  each  52  acres,  out  of  308  acres,  hay  is  obtained. 
The  remainder  are  grazing  grounds. 


104 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


The  net  result  of  all  that  is,  that  on  nearly 
33,000,000  acres  of  cultivable  land  the  food  is 
grown  for  one-third  part  only  of  the  population 
(more  than  two-thirds  of  the  food  it  consumes  is 
imported),  and  we  may  say  accordingly  that, 
although  nearly  two-thirds  of  the  territory  is 
cultivable,  British  agriculture  provides  home¬ 
grown  food  for  each  125  or  135  inhabitants  only 
per  square  mile  (out  of  466).  In  other  words, 
nearly  three  acres  of  the  cultivable  area  are  re¬ 
quired  to  grow  the  food  for  each  person.  Let 
us  then  see  what  is  done  with  the  land  in  France 
and  Belgium. 

Now,  if  we  simply  compare  the  average  thirty 
bushels  per  acre  of  wheat  in  Great  Britain  with 
the  average  nineteen  to  twenty  bushels  grown  in 
France  within  the  last  ten  years,  the  comparison 
is  all  in  favour  of  these  islands  ;  but  such  aver¬ 
ages  are  of  little  value  because  the  two  systems 
of  agriculture  are  totally  different  in  the  two 
countries.  The  Frenchman  also  has  his  picked 
and  heavily  manured  “  twenty-five  to  thirty 
acres  ”  in  the  north  of  France  and  in  Ile-de- 
France,  and  from  these  picked  acres  he  obtains 
average  crops  ranging  from  thirty  to  thirty- 
three  bushels.*  However,  he  sows  with  wheat, 

*  That  is,  thirty  to  thirty-three  bushels  on  the  average ; 
forty  bushels  in  good  farms,  and  fifty  in  the  best.  The  area 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


105 


not  only  the  best  picked  out  acres,  but  also  such 
fields  on  the  Central  Plateau  and  in  Southern 
France  as  hardly  yield  ten,  eight  and  even  six 
bushels  to  the  acre,  without  irrigation  ;  and 
these  low  crops  reduce  the  average  for  the  whole 
country. 

The  Frenchman  cultivates  much  that  is  left 
here  under  permanent  pasture — and  this  is  what 
is  described  as  his  “  inferiority  ”  in  agriculture. 
In  fact,  although  the  proportion  between  what 
we  have  named  the  “  cultivable  area  ”  and  the 
total  territory  is  very  much  the  same  in  France 
as  it  is  in  Great  Britain  (624  acres  out  of  each 
1,000  acres  of  the  territory),  the  area  under  wheat 
crops  is  nearly  six  times  as  great,  in  proportion, 
as  what  it  is  in  Great  Britain  (182  acres  instead 
of  twenty-five  or  thirty,  out  of  each  1,000  acres)  : 
the  corn  crops  altogether  cover  nearly  two-fifths 
of  the  cultivable  area  (375  acres  out  of  1000), 
and  large  areas  are  given  besides  to  green 


under  wheat  was  16,700,000  acres  in  1910,  all  chief  corn  crops 
covering  33,947,000  acres;  the  cultivated  area  is  90,300,000  acres, 
and  the  aggregate  superficies  of  France,  130,800,000  acres. 
About  agriculture  in  France,  see  Lecouteux,  Le  bU,  sa  culture 
extensive  et  intensive,  1883  ;  Risler,  Physiologie  et  culture  du  bU, 
1886  ;  Boitet,  Herbages  et  prairies  naturelles,  1885  ;  Baudrillart, 
Les  populations  agricoles  de  la  Normandie ,  1880 ;  Grandeau, 
La  production  agricole  en  France,  and  U  agriculture  et  les  insti¬ 
tutions  agricoles  du  monde  au  commencement  du  vingtieme  siec.le  ; 
P.  Compain,  Prairies  et  paturages  ;  A.  Clement,  Agriculture 
moderne,  1906  ;  Auge  Laribe,  V Evolution  de  la  France  agricole, 
1912;  Leonce  de  La vergne’s  last  edition  ;  and  so  on. 


106  THE  POSSIBILITIES 

crops,  industrial  crops,  vine,  fruit  and  vege¬ 
tables. 

Taking  everything  into  consideration,  although 
the  Frenchman  keeps  less  cattle,  and  especially 
grazes  less  sheep  than  the  Briton,  he  nevertheless 
obtains  from  his  soil  nearly  all  the  food  that  he 
and  his  cattle  consume.  He  imports,  in  an  aver¬ 
age  year,  but  one-tenth  only  of  what  the  nation 
consumes,  and  he  exports  to  this  country  con¬ 
siderable  quantities  of  food  produce  (£10,000,000 
worth),  not  only  from  the  south,  but  also,  and 
especially,  from  the  shores  of  the  Channel  (Brit¬ 
tany  butter  and  vegetables  ;  fruit  and  vegetables 
from  the  suburbs  of  Paris,  and  so  on).* 

The  net  result  is  that,  although  one-third  part 
of  the  territory  is  also  treated  as  “  uncultivable,” 
the  soil  of  France  yields  the  food  for  170  inhabi¬ 
tants  per  square  mile  (out  of  188),  that  is,  for 
forty  persons  more,  per  square  mile,  than  this 
country  .*j- 

*  The  exports  from  France  in  1910  (average  year]  attained  : 
Wine,  222,804,000  fr. ;  spirits,  54,000,000  fr. ;  cheese,  butter 
and  sugar,  114,000,000  fr.  To  this  country  France  sent,  same 
year,  £2,163,200  worth  of  wine,  £1,013,200  worth  of  refined 
sugar,  £2,116,000  worth  of  butter,  and  £400,000  worth  of 
eggs,  all  of  French  origin  only,  in  addition  to  £12,206,700 
worth  of  manufactured  silks,  woollens,  and  cottons.  The 
exports  from  Algeria  are  not  taken  in  the  above  figures. 

t  Each  1,000  acres  of  French  territory  are  disposed  of  as 
follows :  379  acres  are  under  woods  and  coppices  (176),  build¬ 
ings,  communal  grazing  grounds,  mountains,  etc.,  and  621  acres 
are  considered  as  “  cultivable.”  Out  of  the  latter,  130  are  under 
meadows,  now  irrigated  to  a  great  extent,  257  acres  under 


107 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 

It  is  thus  apparent  that  the  comparison  with 
France  is  not  so  much  in  favour  of  this  country 
as  it  is  said  to  be  ;  and  it  will  be  still  less  fav¬ 
ourable  when  we  come,  in  our  next  chapter,  to 
horticulture. 

The  comparison  with  Belgium  is  even  more 
striking — the  more  so  as  the  two  systems  of 
culture  are  similar  in  both  countries.  To  begin 
with,  in  Belgium  we  also  find  an  average  crop  of 
over  thirty  bushels  of  wheat  to  the  acre  ;  but  the 
area  given  to  wheat  is  five  times  as  big  as  in  Great 
Britain,  in  comparison  to  the  cultivable  area, 
and  the  cereals  cover  two-fifths  of  the  land  avail- 

cereals  (124  under  wheat,  and  26  under  wheat  mixed  with  rye), 
33  under  vineyards,  83  under  orchards,  green  crops,  and 
various  industrial  cultures,  and  the  remainder  is  chiefly  under 
permanent  pasture  or  bare  fallow.  As  to  cattle,  we  find  in 
Great  Britain,  in  1910,  which  was  an  average  year,  7,037,330 
head  of  cattle  (including  in  that  number  about  1,400,000 
calves  under  one  year),  which  makes  twenty-two  head  per  each 
100  acres  of  the  cultivable  area,  and  27,103,000  sheep — that  is, 
eighty-jour  sheep  per  each  100  acres  of  the  same  area.  In 
France  we  find,  in  the  same  year,  14,297,570  cattle  ( nineteen 
head  per  each  100  acres  of  cultivable  area),  and  only  17,357,640 
sheep  ( twenty-one  sheep  per  100  acres  of  the  same).  In  other 
words,  the  proportion  of  horned  cattle  is  nearly  the  same  in 
both  countries  (twenty-two  head  and  nineteen  head  per  100 
acres),  a  considerable  difference  appearing  in  favour  of  this 
country  only  as  to  the  number  of  sheep  (eighty-four  as  against 
twenty-one).  The  heavy  imports  of  liay,  oil-cake,  oats,  etc., 
into  this  country  must,  however,  not  be  forgotten,  because, 
for  each  head  of  cattle  which  lives  on  imported  food,  eight 
sheep  can  bo  grazed,  or  be  fed  with  home-grown  fodder.  As 
to  horses,  both  countries  stand  on  nearly  the  same  footing. 


108 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


able  for  culture.*  The  land  is  so  well  cultivated 
that  the  average  crops  for  the  years  1890-1899 
(the  very  bad  year  of  1891  being  left  out  of  ac¬ 
count)  were  from  twenty-six  and  a  half  to  twenty- 
eight  and  a  half  bushels  per  acre  for  winter  wheat, 
and  reached  an  average  of  thirty-three  and  a  half 
bushels  in  1900-1904  ;  over  fifty-four  bushels  for 
oats  (thirty-five  to  forty-one  and  a  half  in  Great 
Britain),  and  from  forty  to  forty-three  and  a  half 
bushels  for  winter  barley  (twenty-nine  to  thirty- 
five  in  Great  Britain)  ;  while  on  no  less  than 
475,000  acres  catch  crops  of  swedes  (3,345,000 
tons),  carrots  (155,000  tons),  and  more  than 
500,000  of  lucerne  and  other  grasses  were  ob¬ 
tained. f 

As  to  extraordinarily  heavy  crops,  Mr.  See- 


*  Out  of  each  1000  acres  of  territory,  673  are  cultivated,  and 
327  are  left  as  uncultivable,  and  part  of  them  are  now  used  for 
afforestation.  Out  of  the  673  cultivated  acres,  273  are  given 
to  cereals,  out  of  which  61  are  under  pure  wheat,  114  under 
mdteil  (a  mixture  of  §  of  wheat  and  ^  of  rye)  and  pure  rye,  and 
98  under  other  cereals;  18  to  potatoes,  45  to  roots  and  fodder, 
and  281  to  various  industrial  cultures  (beet  for  sugar,  olea¬ 
ginous  grains,  etc.);  27  are  under  gardens,  kitchen  gardens 
and  parks,  177  under  woods,  and  57  are  cultivated  periodi¬ 
cally.  On  the  other  hand,  each  65  acres  out  of  1000  give 
catch-crops  of  carrots,  mangolds,  etc. 

f  Annuaire  Statistique  de  la  Belgique  'pour  1910,  Bruxelles, 
1911.  In  Mr.  Seebohm  Rown tree’s  admirable  work,  Land  and 
Labour  :  Lessons  from  Belgium,  published  1910  (London,  Mac¬ 
millan),  the  reader  will  find  all  concerning  Belgian  agriculture 
dealt  with  in  detail  on  the  basis  of  the  author’s  personal  scrupu¬ 
lous  inquiries  on  the  spot,  and  all  available  statistical  informa¬ 
tion. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


109 


bohm  Rowntree  mentions,  for  instance,  the 
wheat  crop  in  the  commune  of  Oirbeck,  near 
Louvain,  which  was,  in  1906,  on  the  average,  fifty- 
seven  bushels  per  acre,  while  the  average  of  the 
whole  country  was  only  thirty-four  bushels,  or  a 
yield  of  111|  bushels  of  oats  in  the  commune  of 
Neuve-Eglise,  while  the  average  for  Belgium  was 
fifty-four  bushels,  and  so  on,  the  average  crops  of 
several  communes  for  some  cereals  being  seventy- 
three  per  cent,  in  excess  of  the  average  for  Bel¬ 
gium,  and  from  106  to  153  per  cent,  for  roots.* 
All  taken,  they  grow  in  Belgium  more  than 
76,000,000  bushels  of  cereals — that  is,  fifteen  and 
seven-tenths  bushels  per  acre  of  the  cultivable 
area — while  the  corresponding  figure  for  Great 
Britain  is  only  eight  and  a  half  bushels  ;  and  they 
keep  almost  twice  as  many  cattle  upon  each  cul¬ 
tivable  acre  as  is  kept  in  Great  Britain,  f 

Moreover,  they  even  export  cattle  and  horses. 
Up  to  1890  Belgium  exported  from  36,000  to 


*  Land  and  Labour :  Lessons  from  Belgium,  pp.  178,  179. 
f  Taking  all  horses,  cattle  and  sheep  in  both  countries, 
and  reckoning  eight  sheep  as  equivalent  to  one  head  of  horned 
cattle,  we  find  that  Belgium  has  twenty-four  cattle  units  and 
horses  upon  each  100  acres  of  territory,  as  against  twenty  same 
units  and  horses  in  Great  Britain.  If  we  take  cattle  alone,  the 
disproportion  is  much  greater,  as  wre  find  thirty-six  cattle  units 
on  each  100  acres  of  cultivable  area,  as  against  nineteen  in 
Great  Britain.  The  annual  value  of  animal  produce  in  Belgium 
is  estimated  by  the  Annuaire  Statistique  de  la  Belgique  (1910, 
p.  30%)  £66,040,000,  including  milk  (£4,000,000),  poultry 

(£1,600,000),  and  eggs  (£1,400,000). 


110 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


94,000  head  of  cattle,  from  42,000  to  70,000 
sheep,  and  from  60,000  to  108,600  swine.  In 
1890  these  exports  suddenly  came  to  an  end — 
probably  in  consequence  of  a  prohibition  of 
such  imports  into  Germany.  Only  horses  con¬ 
tinue  to  be  exported  to  the  amount  of  about 
25,000  horses  and  foals  every  year. 

Large  portions  of  the  land  are  given  besides 
to  the  culture  of  industrial  plants,  potatoes  for 
spirit,  beet  for  sugar,  and  so  on. 

However,  it  must  not  be  believed  that  the  soil 
of  Belgium  is  more  fertile  than  the  soil  of  this 
country.  On  the  contrary,  to  use  the  words  of 
Laveleye,  “  only  one  half,  or  less,  of  the  territory 
offers  natural  conditions  which  are  favourable 
for  agriculture  ”  ;  the  other  half  consists  of  a 
gravelly  soil,  or  sands,  “  the  natural  sterility  of 
which  could  be  overpowered  only  by  heavy 
manuring.”  Man,  not  nature,  has  given  to  the 
Belgium  soil  its  present  productivity.  'With  this 
soil  and  labour,  Belgium  succeeds  in  supplying 
nearly  all  the  food  of  a  population  which  is 
denser  than  that  of  England  and  Wales,  and 
numbers  589  inhabitants  to  the  square  mile. 

If  the  exports  and  imports  of  agricultural 
produce  from  and  into  Belgium  be  taken  into 
account,  we  can  ask  ourselves  whether  Laveleye’s 
conclusions  are  not  still  good,  and  whether  only 
one  inhabitant  out  of  each  ten  to  twenty  requires 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


Ill 


Fig.  2. — Proportion  of  the  cultivated  area  which  is  given  to 
cereals  altogether,  and  to  wheat,  in  Belgium.  The  square 
which  encloses  the  wheat  square  represents  the  area  given 
to  both  wheat  and  a  mixture  of  wheat  with  rye. 

imported  food.  In  the  years  1880-1885  the  soil 
of  Belgium  supplied  with  home-grown  food  no 
less  than  490  inhabitants  per  square  mile,  and 
there  remained  something  for  export — no  less 
than  £1,000,000*  worth  of  agricultural  produce 
being  exported  every  year  to  Great  Britain. 
But  it  is  not  possible  to  say  with  certitude 
whether  the  conditions  are  the  same  at  the 
present  time. 

Since  1880,  when  the  duties  on  imported 


112 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


Fig.  3. — Proportion  of  cultivated  and  uncultivated  areas  in 
Great  Britain,  Belgium,  and  France,  a,  Wheat ;  b, 
wheat  and  rye  mixed  ;  c,  other  cereals  ;  d't  green  crops ; 
d,  permanent  pasture  ;  e,  uncultivated. 

cereals  were  abolished  (they  were  before  that 
sixpence  for  each  220  lb.),  and  corn  could  be 
imported  free,  “  the  importers  were  no  more 
obliged  to  make  special  declarations  for  mer¬ 
chandise  which  had  to  be  re-exported ;  they 
declared  their  imports  as  if  they  were  destined 
to  be  used  within  the  country.”  *  The  result 

*  I  take  these  lines  from  a  letter  which  the  Rural  Office  of 
the  Belgian  Ministry  of  Agriculture  had  been  kind  enough  to 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


113 


was,  that  while  in  the  year  1870  the  imports  of 
cereals  were  154  lb.  per  head  of  population,  the 
same  imports  rose  to  286  lb.  in  1880.  But  no  one 
can  say  how  .much  of  these  286  lb.  is  consumed  in 
Belgium  itself  ;  and  if  we  deduct  from  the  total 
of  the  imports  the  quantities  re-exported  the 
same  year,  we  obtain  figures  which  cannot  be 
relied  upon/''  It  is  therefore  safer  to  consider  the 
figures  of  the  annual  'production  of  cereals  in 
Belgium,  such  as  they  are  given  in  the  official 
Annuaire. 

Now,  if  we  take  the  figures  given  in  the 


write  to  me  on  January  28,  1910,  in  reply  to  some  questions 
which  I  had  addressed  to  that  Office  in  order  to  explain  the 
striking  oscillations  of  the  Belgian  exports  between  the  years 
1870  and  1880.  A  Belgian  friend,  having  kindly  taken  new 
information  upon  this  point,  had  the  same  opinion  confirmed 
from  another  official  source. 

*  If  we  take  the  figures  of  imports  and  exports,  which  I  also 
owe  to  the  Belgian  Rural  Office,  we  find  that  the  net  imports 
of  wheat,  rye,  and  wheat  mixed  with  rye  (mtteil)  reached  3,011 
million  lb.  in  1907  (3,374  million  in  1910),  which  would  give 
429  lb.  'per  capita  for  a  population  of  7,000,000  inhabitants. 
But  if  this  amount  be  added  to  the  local  production  of  the  same 
cereals,  which  reached  the  same  year  2,426  million  lb.,  we  arrive 
at  the  figure  of  776  lb.  per  head  of  population.  But  such  a 
figure  is  much  too  high,  because  the  annual  per  capita  con¬ 
sumption  of  both  the  winter  and  the  spring  cereals  is  generally 
estimated  to  be  502  lb.  There  must  be,  therefore,  either  an 
error  in  the  weight  of  the  imports,  which  is  improbable,  or  the 
figures  of  re-exported  cereals  are  not  complete.  Let  me  add  that 
in  France  the  average  annual  consumption  per  capita  of  all 
cereals,  including  oats,  has  been  in  the  course  of  twenty-nine 
years  (1880-1908)  525  lb.,  which  confirms  the  above-men¬ 
tioned  figure.  And  in  France  people  eat  as  much  bread  as  in 
Belgium. 


114 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 

Annuaire  Statistique  de  la  Belgique  for  th®  year 
191  1,  we  come  to  the  following  results.  The 
annual  agricultural  census,  which  is  being 
made  since  1901,  gives  for  the  year  1909  that 
2,290,300,000  lb.  of  wheat,  rye,  and  wheat  mixed 
with  rye  were  obtained  on  all  the  farms  of 
Belgium  larger  than  two  and  a  half  acres 
(2,002,000,000  lb.  in-1895).  Besides,  219,200,000 
lb.  of  barley,  1,393,000,000  lb.  of  oats,  and  a 
considerable  quantity  of  oleaginous  grains  have 
been  produced. 

It  is  generally  accepted  that  the  average 
consumption  of  both  winter  and  spring  cereals 
attains  502  lb.  per  head  of  population  ;  and  as 
the  population  of  Belgium  was  7,000,000  on 
January  1,  1907,  it  appears  that  no  less  than 
3,524,400,000  lb.  of  cereals  would  have  been 
required  to  supply  the  annual  food  .of  the  popu¬ 
lation.  If  we  compare  this  figure  with  that  of 
the  annual  production  just  mentioned,  we  see 
then  that,  notwithstanding  the  considerable 
decrease  of  the  area  given  to  wheat  since  the 
abolition  of  the  entrance  duties,  Belgium  still 
produces  at  least  two-thirds  of  the  Cereal  food 
required  for  its  very  dense  population,  which  is 
nearly  600  persons  per  square  mile  (596  in  1907). 

It  must  be  noticed  that  we  should  have  come 
to  a  still  higher  figure  if  we  took  into  account 
the  other  cereals  (to  say  nothing  of  the  legumi- 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


115 


nous  plants  and  vegetables  grown  and  consumed 
in  Belgium),  and  still  more  so  if  we  took  into 
account  what  is  grown  upon  the  small  holdings 
less  than  two  and  a  half  acres  each.  The  number 
of  such  small  holdings  was  554,041  in  1895,  and 
the  number  of  people  living  upon  them  reached 
nearly  2,000,000.  They  are  not  included  in  the 
official  statistics ,  and  yet  upon  most  of  them  some 
cereals  are  grown ,  in  addition  to  vegetables  and 
fodder  for  cattle. 

If  Belgium  produces  in  cereals  the  food  of 
more  than  two-thirds  of  its  very  dense  population, 
this  is  already  a  quite  respectable  figure  ;  but  it 
must  also  be  said  that  it  exports  every  year 
considerable  quantities  of  products  of  the  soil. 
Thus,  in  the  year  1910  she  exported  254,730  tons 
of  vegetables  (as  against  187,000  imported), 
40,000  tons  of  fruit,  34,000  tons  of  plants  and 
flowers  (the  whole  nearly  £3,000,000  worth), 
256,000  of  oleaginous  grains,  18,500  tons  of  wool, 
nearly  60,000  tons  of  flax,  and  so  on,  I  do  not 
mention  the  exports  of  butter,  rabbits,  skins,  an 
immense  quantity  of  sugar  (about  180,000  tons), 
the  vegetable  oils  and  the  spirits,  because  con¬ 
siderable  quantities  of  beet  and  potatoes  are 
imported.  In  short,  we  have  here  an  export 
of  agricultural  produce  grown  in  the  country 
itself  attaining  the  figure  of  48s.  per  head  of 
population. 


116 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


All  taken,  there  is  thus  no  possibility  of  con¬ 
testing  the  fact,  that  if  the  soil  of  Great  Britain 
were  cultivated  only  as  the  unfertile  soil  of 
Belgium  is  cultivated — notwithstanding  all  the 
social  obstacles  which  stand  in  the  way  of  an 
intensive  culture,  in  Belgium  as  elsewhere — a 
much  greater  part  of  the  population  of  these 
islands  would  obtain  its  food  from  the  soil  of  its 
own  land  than  is  the  case  nowadays.* 

On  the  other  side  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  Belgium  is  a  manufacturing  country  which 
exports,  moreover,  manufactured  home-made 
goods  to  the  value  of  198s.  per  head  of  population, 
and  150s.  worth  of  crude  or  half-manufactured 
produce,  while  the  total  exports  from  the  United 
Kingdom  have  only  lately  attained  during  the 
extraordinary  year  of  1911  the  value  of  201s. 
per  inhabitant.  As  to  separate-  parts  of  the 
Belgian  territory,  the  small  and  naturally  un¬ 
fertile  province  of  West  Flanders  not  only  grew 
in  1890  the  food  of  its  580  inhabitants  on  the 
square  mile,  but  exported  agricultural  produce 
to  the  value  of  25s.  per  head  of  its  population. 
And  yet  no  one  can  read  Laveleye’s  masterly 
work  without  coming  to  the  conclusion  that 
Flemish  agriculture  would  have  realised  still 
better  results,  were  it  not  hampered  in  its  growth 
by  the  steady  and  heavy  increase  of  rent.  In  the 

*  See  Appendix  K. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


117 


face  of  the  rent  being  increased  each  nine  years, 
many  farmers  have  lately  abstained  from  further 
improvements. 

Another  example  of  what  could  be  achieved 
by  me^ns  of  an  effort  of  the  nation  seconded 
by  its  educated  classes  is  given  by  Denmark. 
After  the  war  of  1864,  which  ended  in  the  loss 
of  one  of  their  provinces,  the  Danes  made  an 
effort  widely  to  spread  education  amongst  their 
peasants,  and  to  develop  at  the  same  time  an 
intensive  culture  of  the  soil.  The  result  of  these 
efforts  is  now  quite  evident.  The  rural  popu¬ 
lation  of  Denmark,  instead  of  flocking  to  the 
towns,  has  been  increasing :  in  five  years, 
1906-1911,  it  rose  from  1,565,585  to  1,647,350. 
Out  of  a  total  population  of  2,775,100,  no  less 
than  990,900  find  their  living  in  agriculture, 
dairy  work,  and  forestry.  With  a  very  poor 
soil,  they  have  a  cultivated  area  a  trifle  below 
7,000,000  acres,  out  of  which  2,773,320  acres 
are  under  cereals.  Their  wheat  crops  are  on 
the  average  40^  bushels  per  acre,  and  the 
value  of  the  home-grown  food-stuffs  is  esti¬ 
mated  at  £40,000,000,  which  makes  a  little 
less  than  £6  per  acre.  As  to  their  exports  of 
home-grown  produce,  they  exceed  the  imports 
by  £14,483,000.  The  chief  cause  of  these  suc¬ 
cesses  are  :  A  highly  developed  agricultural 


118 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


education,  town  markets  accessible  to  all  the 
growers,  and,  above  all,  co-operation,  which  again 
is  a  result  of  the  effort  that  was  made  by  the 
educated  classes  after  the  unfortunate  war  of 
1864. 

Everyone  knows  that  it  is  now  Danish  butter 
which  rules  the  prices  in  the  London  market,  and 
that  this  butter  is  of  a  high  quality,  which  can 
only  be  attained  in  co-operative  creameries  with 
cold  storage  and  certain  uniform  methods  in 
producing  butter.  But  it  is  not  generally  known 
that  the  Siberian  butter,  which  is  now  imported 
in  immense  quantities  into  this  country,  is  also 
a  creation  of  the  Danish  co-operators.  When 
they  began  to  export  their  butter  in  large  quan¬ 
tities,  they  used  to  import  butter  for  their  own 
use  from  the  southern  parts  of  the  West  Siberian 
provinces  of  Tobolsk  and  Tomsk,  which  are 
covered  with  prairies  very  similar  to  those  of 
Winnipeg  in  Canada.  At  the  outset  this  butter 
was  of  a  most  inferior  quality,  as  it  was  made  by 
every  peasant  household  separately.  The  Danes 
began  therefore  to  teach  co-operation  to  the 
Russian  peasants,  and  they  were  rapidly  under¬ 
stood  by  the  intelligent  population  of  this  fertile 
region.  The  co-operative  creameries  began  to 
spread  with  an  astounding  rapidity,  without  us 
knowing  for  some  time  wherefrom  came  this 
interesting  movement.  At  the  present  time  a 


OF  AGRICULTURE.  119 

steamer  loaded  with  Siberian  butter  leaves 
every  week  one  of  the  Baltic  ports  and  brings  to 
London  many  thousands  of  casks  of  Siberian 
butter.  If  I  am  not  wrong,  Finland  has  also 
joined  lately  in  the  same  export. 

Without  going  as  far  as  China,  I  might  quote 
similar  examples  from  elsewhere,  especially  from 
Lombardy.  But  the  above  will  be  enough  to 
caution  the  reader  against  hasty  conclusions 
as  to  the  impossibility  of  feeding  46,000,000 
people  from  78,000,000  acres.  They  also  will 
enable  me  to  draw  the  following  conclusions  : 
(i)  if  the  soil  of  the  United  Kingdom  were 
cultivated  only  as  it  was  forty-five  years  ago, 
24,000,000  people,  instead  of  17,000,000,  could 
live  on  home-grown  food ;  and  this  culture, 
while  giving  occupation  to  an  additional  750,000 
men,  would  give  nearly  3,000,000  wealthy  home 
customers  to  the  British  manufactures.  (2)  If 
the  cultivable  area  of  the  United  Kingdom  were 
cultivated  as  the  soil  is  cultivated  on  the  average 
in  Belgium,  the  United  Kingdom  would  have  food 
for  at  least  37,000,000  inhabitants  ;  and  it  might 
export  agricultural  produce  without  ceasing  to 
manufacture,  so  as  freely  to  supply  all  the  needs 
of  a  wealthy  population.  And  finally  (3),  if  the 
population  of  this  country  came  to  be  doubled, 
all  that  would  be  required  for  producing  the  food 


120 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


for  90,000,000  inhabitants  would  be  to  cultivate 
the  soil  as  it  is  cultivated  in  the  best  farms  of 
this  country,  in  Lombardy,  and  in  Flanders,  and 
to  utilise  some  meadows,  which  at  present  lie 
almost  unproductive,  in  the  same  way  as  the 
neighbourhoods  of  the  big  cities  in  France  are 
utilised  for  market-gardening.  All  these  are 
not  fancy  dreams,  but  mere  realities  ;  nothing 
but  the  modest  conclusions  from  what  we  see 
round  about  us,  without  any  allusion  to  the 
agriculture  of  the  future. 

If  we  want,  however,  to  know  what  agri¬ 
culture  can  be,  and  what  can  be  grown  on  a 
given  amount  of  soil,  we  must  apply  for  in¬ 
formation  to  such  regions  as  the  district  of 
Saffelare  in  East  Flanders,  the  island  of  Jersey, 
or  the  irrigated  meadows  of  Lombardy,  which 
are  mentioned  in  the  next  chapter.  Or  else 
we  may  apply  to  the  market-gardeners  in  this 
country,  or  in  the  neighbourhoods  of  Paris,  or 
in  Holland,  or  to  the  “  truck  farms  ”  in  America, 
and  so  on. 

While  science  devotes  its  chief  attention  to 
industrial  pursuits,  a  limited  number  of  lovers 
of  nature  and  a  legion  of  workers  whose  very 
names  will  remain  unknown  to  posterity  have 
created  of  late  a  quite  new  agriculture,  as 
superior  to  modern  farming  as  modern  farm- 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


121 


ing  is  superior  to  the  old  three-fields  system  of 
our  ancestors.  Science  seldom  guided  them, 
and  sometimes  misguided — as  was  the  case  with 
Liebig’s  theories,  developed  to  the  extreme  by 
his  followers,  who  induced  us  to  treat  plants 
as  glass  recipients  of  chemical  drugs,  and  who 
forgot  that  the  only  science  capable  of  dealing 
with  life  and  growth  is  physiology,  not  chemistry. 
Science  seldom  has  guided  them  :  they  pro¬ 
ceeded  in  the  empirical  way ;  but,  like  the 
cattle-growers  who  opened  new  horizons  to 
biology,  they  have  opened  a  new  field  of 
experimental  research  for  the  physiology  of 
plants.  They  have  created  a  totally  new 
agriculture.  They  smile  when  we  boast  about 
the  rotation  system,  having  permitted  us  to 
take  from  the  field  one  crop  every  year,  or  four 
crops  each  three  years,  because  their  ambition 
is  to  have  six  and  nine  crops  from  the  very 
same  plot  of  land  during  the  twelve  months. 
They  do  not  understand  our  talk  about  good 
and  bad  soils,  because  they  make  the  soil  them¬ 
selves,  and  make  it  in  such  quantities  as  to  be 
compelled  yearly  to  sell  some  of  it  :  otherwise 
it  would  raise  up  the  level  of  their  gardens  by 
half  an  inch  every  year.  They  aim  at  cropping, 
not  five  or  six  tons  of  grass  on  the  acre,  as  we 
do,  but  from  50  to  100  tons  of  various  vege¬ 
tables  on  the  same  space  ;  not  £5  worth  of  hay 


122  THE  POSSIBILITIES 

but  £100  worth  of  vegetables,  of  the  plainest 
description,  cabbage  and  carrots,  and  more 
than  £200  worth  under  intensive  horticultural 
treatment.  This  is  where  agriculture  is  going  now. 

We  know  that  the  dearest  of  all  varieties  of 
our  staple  food  is  meat ;  and  those  who  are 
not  vegetarians,  either  by  persuasion  or  by 
necessity,  consume  on  the  average  225  lb.  of 
meat— that  is,  roughly  speaking,  a  little  less 
than  the  third  part  of  an  ox— every  year. 
And  we  have  seen  that,  even  in  this  country, 
and  Belgium,  two  to  three  acres  are  wanted  for 
keeping  one  head  of  horned  cattle  ;  so  that  a 
community  of,  say,  1,000,000  inhabitants  would 
have  to  reserve  somewhere  about  1,000,000 
acres  of  land  for  supplying  it  with  meat.  But 
if  we  go  to  yhe  farm  of  M.  Goppart — one  of  the 
promoters  of  ensilage  in  France— we  shall  see 
him  growing,  on  a  drained  and  well-manured 
field,  no  less  than  an  average  of  120,000  lb.  of 
corn-grass  to  the  acre,  which  gives  30,000  lb.  of 
dry  hay — that  is,  the  food  of  one  horned  beast 
per  acre.  The  produce  is  thus  trebled. 

As  to  beetroot,  which  is  used  also  for  feeding 
cattle,  Mr.  Champion,  at  Whitby,  succeeded, 
with  the  help  of  sewage,  in  growing  100,000  lb. 
of  beet  on  each  acre,  and  occasionally  150,000 
and  200,000  lb.  He  thus  grew  on  each  acre 
the  food  of,  at  least,  two  or  three  head  of  cattle. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


123 


And  such  crops  are  not  isolated  facts  ;  thus,  M. 
Gros,  at  Autun,  succeeds  in  cropping  600,000 
lb.  of  beet  and  carrots,  which  crop  would  permit 
him  to  keep  four  horned  cattle  on  each  acre. 
In  fact,  crops  of  100,000  lb.  of  beet  occur  in 
numbers  in  the  French  competitions,  and  the 
success  depends  entirely  upon  good  culture  and 
appropriate  manuring.  It  thus  appears  that 
while  under  ordinary  high  farming  we  need 
2,000,000  acres,  or  more,  to  keep  1,000,000 
homed  cattle,  double  that  amount  could  be 
kept  on  one-half  of  that  area ;  and  if  the 
density  of  population  required  it,  the  amount 
of  cattle  could  be  doubled  again,  and  the  area 
required  to  keep  it  might  still  be  one-half,  or 
even  one-third  of  what  it  is  now.* 

*  Assuming  that  9,000  lb.  of  dry  hay  are  necessary  for  keep¬ 
ing  one  head  of  horned  cattle  every  year,  the  following  figures 
(taken  from  Toubeau’s  Repartition  nv'triqne  des  impots)  will  show 
what  we  obtain  now  under  usual  and  under  intensive  culture : — 


Crop  per  acre. 
Eng.  lb. 

Equivalent  in 
dry  hay. 
Eng.  lb. 

Number  of 
cattle  fed 
from  each 
100  acres. 

Pasture  .... 

1,200 

13 

Unirrigated  meadows 

— 

2,400 

26 

Clover,  cut  twice 

— 

4,800 

52 

Swedish  turnips  . 

38,500 

10,000 

108 

Rye-grass 

64,000 

18,000 

180 

Beet,  high  farming  . 

64,000 

21,000 

210 

Indian  com,  ensilage 

120,000 

30,000 

330 

124 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


French  Gardening. — The  above  examples  are 
striking  enough,  and  yet  those  afforded  by  the 
market-gardening  culture  are  still  more  striking. 
I  mean  the  culture  carried  on  in  the  neighbour¬ 
hood  of  big  cities,  and  more  especially  the 
culture  maraichere  round  Paris.  In  this  culture 
each  plant  is  treated  according  to  its  age. 
The  seeds  germinate  and  the  seedlings  develop 
their  first  four  leaflets  in  especially  favourable 
conditions  of  soil  and  temperature  ;  then  the, 
best  seedlings  are  picked  out  and  transplanted 
into  a  bed  of  fine  loam,  under  a  frame  or  in  the 
open  air,  where  they  freely  develop  their  root¬ 
lets,  and,  gathered  on  a  limited  space,  receive 
more  than  the  usual  care.  Only  after  this 
preliminary  training  are  they  bedded  in  the 
open  ground,  where  they  grow  till  ripe.  In 
such  a  culture  the  primitive  condition  of  the 
soil  is  of  little  account,  because  loam  is  made 
out  of  the  old  forcing  beds.  The  seeds  are 
carefully  tried,  the  seedlings  receive  proper 
attention,  and  there  is  no  fear  of  drought, 
because  of  the  variety  of  crops,  the  liberal 
watering  with  the  help  of  a  steam  engine, 
and  the  stock  of  plants  always  kept  ready  to 
replace  the  weakest  individuals.  Almost  each 
plant  is  treated  individually. 

There  prevails,  however,  with  regard  to 
market-gardening,  a  misunderstanding  which 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


125 


it  would  be  well  to  remove.  It  is  generally 
supposed  that  what  chiefly  attracts  market¬ 
gardening  to  the  great  centres  of  population 
is  the  market.  It  must  have  been  so  ;  and  so 
it  may  be  still,  but  to  some  extent  only.  A 
great  number  of  the  Paris  maraichers ,  even  of 
those  who  have  their  gardens  within  the  walls 
of  the  city  and  whose  main  crop  consists  of 
vegetables  in  season,  export  the  whole  of  their 
produce  to  England.  What  chiefly  attracts 
the  gardener  to  the  great  cities  is  stable  manure  ; 
and  this  is  not  wanted  so  much  for  increasing 
the  richness  of  the  soil — one-tenth  part  of  the 
manure  used  by  the  French  gardeners  would  do 
for  that  purpose — but  for  keeping  the  soil  at 
a  certain  temperature.  Early  vegetables  pay 
best,  and  in  order  to  obtain  early  produce  not 
only  the  air  but  the  soil  as  well  must  be  warmed ; 
and  this  is  done  by  putting  great  quantities  of 
properly  mixed  manure  into  the  soil ;  its 
fermentation  heats  it.  But  it  is  evident  that 
with  the  present  development  of  industrial 
skill,  the  heating  of  the  soil  could  be  obtained 
more  economically  and  more  easily  by  hot- 
water  pipes.  Consequently,  the  French  gar¬ 
deners  begin  more  and  more  to  make  use  of 
portable  pipes,  or  thermosiphons,  provisionally 
established  in  the  cool  frames.  This  new  im¬ 
provement  becomes  of  general  use,  and  we  have 


120 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


the  authority  of  Barral’s  Dictionnaire  (F Agri¬ 
culture  to  affirm  that  it  gives  excellent  results. 
Under  this  system  stable  manure  is  used  mainly 
for  producing  loam.* 

As  to  the  different  degrees  of  fertility  of  the 
soil — always  the  stumbling-block  of  those  who 
write  about  agriculture — the  fact  is  that  in 
market-gardening  the  soil  is  always  made,  what¬ 
ever  it  originally  may  have  been.  Conse¬ 
quently — we  are  told  by  Prof.  Dybowski,  in  the 

article  “  Maraichers  ”  in  Barral’s  Dictionnaire 

\ 

d* Agriculture — it  is  now  a  usual  stipulation  of 
the  renting  contracts  of  the  Paris  maraichers 
that  the  gardener  may  carry  away  his  soil, 
down  to  a  certain  depth,  when  he  quits  his 
tenancy.  He  himself  makes  it,  and  when  he 
moves  to  another  plot  he  carts  his  soil  away, 
together  with  his  frames,  his  water-pipes,  and 
his  other  belongings.*)* 

*  I  saw  thermosiphons  used  by  the  market-gardeners  at 
Worthing.  They  said  that  they  found  them  quite  satisfactory. 
As  to  the  cost  of  heating  the  soil,  let  me  mention  the  experi¬ 
ments  of  H.  Mehner,  described  in  Gartenflora,  fascicules  16  and 
17  of  the  year  1906.  He  considers  the  cost  quite  small,  in 
comparison  with  the  inci’eased  value  of  the  crops.  With  £100 
per  Morgen,  spent  for  the  installation,  and  £10  every  spring  for 
heating,  the  author  estimates  the  increase  in  the  value  of  crops 
(earlier  vegetables)  at  £100  every  year.  (Report  to  the  German 
Landwirthschafts  Gesellschaft,  1906.) 

t  44  Portable  soil  ”  is  not  the  latest  departure  in  agriculture. 
The  last  one  is  the  watering  of  the  soil  with  special  liquids 
containing  special  microbes.  It  is  a  fact  that  chemical  manures, 
without  organic  manure,  seldom  prove  to  be  sufficient.  On 


OF  AGRICULTURE.  127 

I  could  not  relate  here  all  the  marvels  achieved 
in  market-gardening  ;  so  that  I  must  refer  the 
reader  to  works — most  interesting  works— 
especially  devoted  to  the  subject,  and  give 
only  a  few  illustrations.*  Let  us  take,  for 
instance,  the  orchard— the  marais — of  M.  Ponce, 
the  author  of  a  well-known  work  on  the  culture 

the  other  hand,  it  was  discovered  lately  that  certain  microbes 
in  the  soil  are  a  necessary  condition  for  the  growth  of  plants. 
Hence  the  idea  of  sowing  the  beneficent  microbes,  which  rapidly 
develop  in  the  soil  and  fertilise  it.  We  certainly  shall  soon 
hear  more  of  this  new  method,  which  is  experimented  upon  on 
a  large  scale  in  Germany,  in  order  to  transform  peat-bogs 
and  heavy  soils  into  rich  meadows  and  fields. 

*  Ponce,  La  culture  maraichere,  1869 ;  Gressent,  Le  potager 
moderns,  7th  edition  in  1886  ;  Courtois-Gerard,  Manuel  pratique 
de  culture  maraichere,  1863  ;  L.  G.  Gillekens,  Cours  pratique  de 
culture  maraichere,  Bruxelles,  1895  ;  Vilmorin,  Le  bon  jardinier 
(almanac).  The  general  reader  who  cares  to  know  about  the 
productivity  of  the  soil  will  find  plenty  of  examples,  well  classi¬ 
fied,  in  the  most  interesting  work  La  Repartition  mttrique  des 
impots,  by  A.  Toubeau,  2  vols.,  1880.  X  do  not  quote  many 
excellent  English  manuals,  but  I  must  remark  that  the  market¬ 
gardening  culture  in  this  country  has  also  obtained  results  very 
highly  prized  by  the  Continental  gardeners,  and  that  the  chief 
reproach  to  be  addressed  to  it  is  its  relatively  small  extension. 
French  market-gardening  having  been  lately  introduced  into 
England,  several  manuals  have  been  published  for  that  pur¬ 
pose.  The  little  work,  French  Gardening,  by  Thomas  Smith, 
London  (Utopia  Press),  1909,  deserves  special  mention,  as  it 
contains  the  results  of  one  year’s  observation  of  the  work 
of  a  French  gardener,  specially  invited  to  England  by  Mr. 
Joseph  Fels,  and  gives  (with  illustrations)  a  mass  of  prac¬ 
tical  indications  and  numerical  data  as  to  the  cost  and  the 
value  of  the  produce.  A  subsequent  work  of  the  same  author. 
The  Profitable  Culture  of  Vegetables  for  Market  Gardeners,  Small 
Holders ,  and  Others ,  London  (Longmans,  Green),  1911,  deals  in 
detail  with  the  ordinary  culture  of  vegetables  and  the  inten¬ 
sive  culture  of  the  French  gardeners. 


128 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


maraichere.  His  orchard  covered  only  two  and 
seven-tenths  acres.  The  outlay  for  the  estab¬ 
lishment,  including  a  steam  engine  for  watering 
purposes,  reached  £1,136.  Eight  persons,  M. 
Ponce  included,  cultivated  the  orchard  and 
carried  the  vegetables  to  the  market,  for  which 
purpose  one  horse  was  kept ;  when  returning 
from  Paris  they  brought  in  manure,  for  which 
£100  was  spent  every  year.  Another  £100  was 
spent  in  rent  and  taxes.  But  how  to  enumerate 
all  that  was  gathered  every  year  on  this  plot  of 
less  than  three  acres,  without  filling  two  pages 
or  more  with  the  most  wonderful  figures  ?  One 
must  read  them  in  M.  Ponce’s  work,  but  here 
are  the  chief  items  :  More  than  20,000  lb.  of 
carrots  ;  more  than  20,000  lb.  of  onions,  radishes 
and  other  vegetables  sold  by  weight ;  6,000 

heads  of  cabbage  ;  3,000  of  cauliflower  ;  5,000 
baskets  of  tomatoes  ;  5,000  dozen  of  choice 

fruit ;  and  154,000  heads  of  salad  ;  in  short, 
a  total  of  250,000  lb.  of  vegetables.  The  soil 
was  made  to  such  an  amount  out  of  forcing 
beds  that  every  year  250  cubic  yards  of  loam 
had  to  be  sold.  Similar  examples  could  be 
given  by  the  dozen,  and  the  best  evidence 
against  any  possible  exaggeration  of  the  results 
is  the  very  high  rent  paid  by  the  gardeners, 
which  reaches  in  the  suburbs  of  London  from 
£10  to  £15  per  acre,  and  in  the  suburbs  of  Paris 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


129 


attains  as  much  as  £32  per  acre.  No  less  than 
2,125  acres  are  cultivated  round  Paris  in  that 
way  by  5,000  persons,  and  thus  not  only  the 
2,000,000  Parisians  are  supplied  with  vege¬ 
tables,  but  the  surplus  is  also  sent  to  London. 

The  above  results  are  obtained  with  the  help 
of  warm  frames,  thousands  of  glass  bells,  and 
so  on.  But  even  without  such  costly  things, 
with  only  thirty-six  yards  of  frames  for  seedlings, 
vegetables  are  grown  in  the  open  air  to  the 
value  of  £200  per  acre.*  It  is  obvious,  how¬ 
ever,  that  in  such  cases  the  high  selling  prices  of 
the  crops  are  not  due  to  the  high  prices  fetched 
by  early  vegetables  in  winter  ;  they  are  entirely 
due  to  the  high  crops  of  the  plainest  ones. 

Let  me  add  also  that  all  this  wonderful 
culture  has  entirely  developed  in  the  second 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Before  that, 
it  was  quite  primitive.  But  now  the  Paris 
gardener  not  only  defies  the  soil — he  would 
grow  the  same  crops  on  an  asphalt  pavement — 
he  defies  climate.  His  walls,  which  are  built 
to  reflect  light  and  to  protect  the  wall-trees 
from  the  northern  winds,  his  wall-tree  shades 
and  glass  protectors,  his  frames  and  pepinieres 
have  made  a  real  garden,  a  rich  Southern 
garden,  out  of  the  suburbs  of  Paris.  He  has 

*  Manuel  pratique  de  culture  maraichere,  by  Courtois-G6rard, 

4th  edit.,  1868. 

5 


130 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


given  to  Paris  the  “  two  degrees  less  of  latitude  ” 
after  which  a  French  scientific  writer  was 
longing  ;  he  supplies  his  city  with  mountains 
of  grapes  and  fruit  at  any  season  ;  and  in  the 
early  spring  he  inundates  and  perfumes  it 
with  flowers.  But  he  does  not  only  grow  articles 
of  luxury.  The  culture  of  plain  vegetables  on 
a  large  scale  is  spreading  every  year  ;  and  the 
results  are  so  good  that  there  are  now  practical 
maraichers  who  venture  to  maintain  that  if  all 
the  food,  animal  and  vegetable,  necessary  for 
4,500,000  inhabitants  of  the  departments  of 
Seine  and  Seine-et-Oise  had  to  be  grown  on 
their  own  territory  (3,250  square  miles),  it 
could  be  grown  without  resorting  to  any  other 
methods  of  culture  than  those  already  in  use — 
methods  already  tested  on  a  large  scale  and 
proved  to  be  successful. 

And  yet  the  Paris  gardener  is  not  our  ideal 
of  an  agriculturist.  In  the  painful  work  of 
civilisation  he  has  shown  us  the  way  to  follow  ; 
but  the  ideal  of  modern  civilisation  is  else¬ 
where.  He  toils,  with  but  a  short  interrup¬ 
tion,  from  three  in  the  morning  till  late  in  the 
night.  He  knows  no  leisure  ;  he  has  no  time 
to  live  the  life  of  a  human  being  ;  the  common¬ 
wealth  does  not  exist  for  him  ;  his  world  is 
his  garden,  more  than  his  family.  He  cannot 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


131 


be  our  ideal ;  neither  he  nor  his  system  of 
agriculture.  Our  ambition  is,  that  he  should 
produce  even  more  than  he  does  with  less 
labour,  and  should  enjoy  all  the  joys  of  human 
life.  And  this  is  fully  possible. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  if  we  put  aside  those 
gardeners  who  chiefly  cultivate  the  so-called 
primeurs — strawberries  ripened  in  January,  and 
the  like — if  we  take  only  those  who  grow  their 
crops  in  the  open  field,  and  resort  to  frames 
exclusively  for  the  earlier  days  of  the  life  of 
the  plant,  and  if  we  analyse  their  system,  we  see 
that  its  very  essence  is,  first,  to  create  for  the 
plant  a  nutritive  and  porous  soil,  which  con¬ 
tains  both  the  necessary  decaying  organic 
matter  and  the  inorganic  compounds  ;  and  then 
to  keep  that  soil  and  the  surrounding  atmos¬ 
phere  at  a  temperature  and  moisture  superior  to 
those  of  the  open  air.  The  whole  system  is 
summed  up  in  these  few  words.  If  the  French 
maraicher  spends  prodigies  of  labour,  intelli¬ 
gence,  and  imagination  in  combining  different 
kinds  of  manure,  so  as  to  make  them  ferment 
at  a  given  speed,  he  does  so  for  no  purpose  but 
the  above  :  a  nourishing  soil,  and  a  desired 
equal  temperature  and  moisture  of  the  air  and 
the  soil.  All  his  empirical  art  is  devoted  to  the 
achievement  of  these  two  aims.  But  both  can 
also  be  achieved  in  another  and  much  easier 


132 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


way.  The  soil  can  be  improved  by  hand,  but 
it  need  not  be  made  by  hand.  Any  soil,  of  any 
desired  composition,  can  be  made  by  machinery. 
We  already  have  manufactures  of  manure, 
engines  for  pulverising  the  phosphorites,  and 
even  the  granites  of  the  Vosges  ;  and  we  shall 
see  manufactures  of  loam  as  soon  as  there  is  a 
demand  for  them. 

It  is  obvious  that  at  present,  when  fraud  and 
adulteration  are  exercised  on  such  an  immense 
scale  in  the  manufacture  of  artificial  manure, 
and  the  manufacture  of  manure  is  considered 
as  a  chemical  process,  while  it  ought  to  be 
considered  as  a  physiological  one,  the  gardener 
prefers  to  spend  an  unimaginable  amount  of 
labour  rather  than  risk  his  crop  by  the  use  of  a 
pompously  labelled  and  unworthy  drug.  But 
that  is  a  social  obstacle  which  depends  upon  a 
want  of  knowledge  and  a  bad  social  organisa¬ 
tion,  not  upon  physical  causes.* 

*  Already  it  is  partly  removed  in  France  and  Belgium,  owing 
to  the  public  laboratories  where  analyses  of  seeds  and  manure 
are  made  free.  The  falsifications  discovered  by  these  labora¬ 
tories  exceed  all  that  could  have  been  imagined.  Manures, 
containing  only  one-fifth  part  of  the  nutritious  elements  they 
were  supposed  to  contain,  were  found  to  be  quite  common  ; 
while  manures  containing  injurious  matters,  and  no  nutritious 
parts  whatever,  were  not  unfrequently  supplied  by  firms  of 
“  respectable  ”  repute.  With  seeds,  things  stand  even  worse. 
Samples  of  grass  seeds  which  contained  20  per  cent,  of  unjurious 
grasses,  or  20  per  cent,  of  grains  of  sand,  so  coloured  as  to 
deceive  the  buyer,  or  even  10  per  cent,  of  a  deadly  poisonous 
grass,  passed  through  the  Ghent  laboratory. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


133 


Of  course,  the  necessity  of  creating  for  the 
earlier  life  of  the  plant  a  warm  soil  and  atmos¬ 
phere  will  always  remain,  and  sixty  years  ago 
Leonce  de  Lavergne  foretold  that  the  next  step 
in  culture  would  be  to  warm  the  soil.  But 
heating  pipes  give  the  same  results  as  the 
fermenting  manures  at  a  much  smaller  expense 
of  human  labour.  And  already  the  system 
works  on  a  large  scale,  as  will  be  seen  from 
the  next  chapter.  Through  it  the  productive 
powers  of  a  given  area  of  land  are  increased 
more  than  a  hundred  times. 

It  is  obvious  that  now,  when  the  capitalist 
system  makes  us  pay  for  everything  three  or 
four  times  its  labour  value,  we  often  spend 
about  £1  for  each  square  yard  of  a  heated 
conservatory.  But  how  many  middlemen  are 
making  fortunes  on  the  wooden  sashes  imported 
from  Drontheim  ?  If  we  only  could  reckon  our 
expenses  in  labour,  we  should  discover  to  our 
amazement  that,  thanks  to  the  use  of  machinery, 
the  square  yard  of  a  conservatory  does  not 
cost  more  than  half  a  day  of  human  labour  ; 
and  we  will  see  presently  that  the  Jersey  and 
Guernsey  average  for  cultivating  one  acre  under 
glass  is  only  three  men  working  ten  hours  a  day. 
Therefore  the  conservatory,  which  formerly  was 
a  luxury,  is  rapidly  entering  into  the  domain 
of  high  culture.  And  we  may  foresee  the  day 


134 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


when  the  glass  conservatory  will  be  considered 
as  a  necessary  appendix  to  the  field,  both  for 
the  growth  of  those  fruits  and  vegetables 
which  cannot  succeed  in  the  open  air,  and  for 
the  preliminary  training  of  most  cultural  plants 
during  the  earlier  stages  of  their  life. 

Home-grown  fruit  is  always  preferable  to  the 
half-ripe  produce  which  is  imported  from 
abroad,  and  the  additional  work  required  for 
keeping  a  young  plant  under  glass  is  largely 
repaid  by  the  incomparable  superiority  of  the 
crops.  As  to  the  question  of  labour,  when  we 
remember  the  incredible  amount  of  labour 
which  has  been  spent  on  the  Rhine  and  in 
Switzerland  for  making  the  vineyards,  their 
terraces,  and  stone  walls,  and  for  carrying  the 
soil  up  the  stony  crags,  as  also  the  amount  of 
labour  which  is  spent  every  year  for  the  culture 
of  those  vineyards  and  fruit  gardens,  we  are 
inclined  to  ask,  which  of  the  two,  all  taken,  re¬ 
quires  less  of  human  labour — a  vinery  (I  mean 
the  cold  vinery)  in  a  London  suburb,  or  a  vine¬ 
yard  on  the  Rhine,  or  on  Lake  Leman  ?  And 
when  we  compare  the  prices  realised  by  the 
grower  of  grapes  round  London  (not  those  which 
are  paid  in  the  West-end  fruit  shops,  but  those 
received  by  the  grower  for  his  grapes  in  Septem¬ 
ber  and  Octobor)  with  those  curront  in  Switzer¬ 
land  or  on  the  Rhine  during  the  same  months, 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


135 


we  are  inclined  tc  maintain  that  nowhere  in 
Europe,  beyond  the  forty-fifth  degree  of  lati¬ 
tude,  are  grapes  grown  at  less  expense  of  human 
labour,  both  for  capital  outlay  and  yearly  work, 
than  in  the  vineries  of  the  London  and  Brussels 
suburbs. 

At  any  rate,  let  us  not  overrate  the  pro¬ 
ductivity  of  the  exporting  countries,  and  let 
us  remember  that  the  vine-growers  of  Southern 
Europe  drink  themselves  an  abominable  piquette  ; 
that  Marseilles  fabricates  wine  for  home  use  out 
of  dry  raisins  brought  from  Asia  ;  and  that  the 
Normandy  peasant  who  sends  his  apples  to 
London,  drinks  real  cider  only  on  great  fes¬ 
tivities.  Such  a  state  of  things  will  not  last 
for  ever  ;  and  the  day  is  not  far  when  we  shall 
be  compelled  to  look  to  our  own  resources  to  pro¬ 
vide  many  of  the  things  which  we  now  import. 
And  we  shall  not  be  the  worse  for  that.  The 
resources  of  science,  both  in  enlarging  the  circle 
of  our  production  and  in  new  discoveries,  are 
inexhaustible.  And  each  new  branch  of  activity 
calls  into  existence  more  and  more  new  branches, 
which  steadily  increase  the  power  of  man  over 
the  forces  of  nature. 

If  we  take  all  into  consideration ;  if  we 
realise  the  progress  made  of  late  in  the  garden¬ 
ing  culture,  and  the  tendency  towards  spreading 
its  methods  to  the  open  field  ;  if  we  watch  the 


136 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


cultural  experiments  which  are  being  made 
now — experiments  to-day  and  realities  to¬ 
morrow — and  ponder  over  the  resources  kept 
in  store  by  science,  we  are  bound  to  say  that 
it  is  utterly  impossible  to  foresee  at  the  present 
moment  the  limits  as  to  the  maximum  number 
of  human  beings  who  could  draw  their  means  of 
subsistence  from  a  given  area  of  land,  or  as  to 
what  a  variety  of  produce  they  could  advan¬ 
tageously  grow  in  any  latitude.  Each  day  widens 
former  limits,  and  opens  new  and  wide  horizons. 
All  we  can  say  now  is,  that,  even  now,  600 
persons  could  easily  live  on  a  square  mile ; 
and  that,  with  cultural  methods  already  used 
on  a  large  scale,  1,000  human  beings — not 
idlers — living  on  1,000  acres  could  easily, 
without  any  kind  of  overwork,  obtain  from 
that  area  a  luxurious  vegetable  and  animal 
food,  as  well  as  the  flax,  wool,  silk,  and  hides 
necessary  for  their  clothing.  As  to  what  may 
be  obtained  under  still  more  perfect  methods — 
also  known  but  not  yet  tested  on  a  large  scale 
— it  is  better  to  abstain  from  any  forecast : 
so  unexpected  are  the  recent  achievements  of 
intensive  culture. 

We  thus  see  that  the  over-population  fallacy 
does  not  stand  the  very  first  attempt  at  sub¬ 
mitting  it  to  a  closer  examination.  Those  only 
can  be  horror-stricken  at  seeing  the  population 


OF  AGRICULTURE.  137 

of  this  country  increase  by  one  individual 
every  1,000  seconds  who  think  of  a  human 
being  as  a  mere  claimant  upon  the  stock  of 
material  wealth  of  mankind,  without  being  at 
the  same  time  a  contributor  to  that  stock. 
But  we,  who  see  in  each  new-born  babe  a 
future  worker  capable  of  producing  much 
more  than  his  own  share  of  the  common  stock 
— we  greet  his  appearance. 

We  know  that  a  crowded  population  is  a 
necessary  condition  for  permitting  man  to  in¬ 
crease  the  productive  powers  of  his  labour.  We' 
know  that  highly  productive  labour  is  impossible 
so  long  as  men  are  scattered,  few  in  numbers, 
over  wide  territories,  and  are  thus  unable  to 
combine  together  for  the  higher  achievements 
of  civilisation.  We  know  what  an  amount  of 
labour  must  be  spent  to  scratch  the  soil  with  a 
primitive  plough,  to  spin  and  weave  by  hand  ; 
and  we  know  also  how  much  less  labour  it 
costs  to  grow  the  same  amount  of  food  and 
weave  the  same  cloth  with  the  help  of  modem 
machinery. 

We  also  see  that  it  is  infinitely  easier  to 
grow  200,000  lb.  of  food  on  one  acre  than  to 
grow  them  on  ten  acres.  It  is  all  very  well 
to  imagine  that  wheat  grows  by  itself  on  the 
Russian  steppes ;  but  those  who  have  seen 
how  the  peasant  toils  in  the  “  fertile  ”  black 


138 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


earth  region  will  have  one  desire  :  that  the 
increase  of  population  may  permit  the  use  of 
the  steam-digger  and  gardening  culture  in  the 
steppes  ;  that  it  may  permit  those  who  are 
now  the  beasts  of  burden  of  humanity  to  raise 
their  backs  and  to  become  at  last  men. 

We  must,  however,  recognise  that  there  are 
a  few  economists  fully  aware  of  the  above 
truths.  They  gladly  admit  that  Western 
Europe  could  grow  much  more  food  than  it 
does  ;  but  they  see  no  necessity  nor  advan¬ 
tage  in  doing  so,  as  long  as  there  are  nations 
which  can  supply  food  in  exchange  for  manu¬ 
factured  goods.  Let  us  then  examine  how  far 
this  view  is  correct. 

It  is  obvious  that  if  we  are  satisfied  with 
merely  stating  that  it  is  cheaper  to  bring  wheat 
from  Riga  than  to  grow  it  in  Lincolnshire,  the 
whole  question  is  settled  in  a  moment.  But 
is  it  so  in  reality  ?  Is  it  really  cheaper  to  have 
food  from  abroad  ?  And,  supposing  it  is,  are 
we  not  yet  bound  to  analyse  that  compound 
result  which  we  call  price,  rather  than  to  accept 
it  as  a  supreme  and  blind  ruler  of  our  actions  ? 

We  know,  for  instance,  how  French  agricul¬ 
ture  is  burdened  by  taxation.  And  yet,  if  we 
compare  the  prices  of  articles  of  food  in  France, 
which  herself  grows  most  of  them,  with  the 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


139 


prices  in  this  country,  which  imports  them, 
we  find  no  difference  in  favour  of  the  import¬ 
ing  country.  On  the  contrary,  the  balance  is 
rather  in  favour  of  France,  and  it  decidedly 
was  so  for  wheat  until  the  new  protective  tariff 
was  introduced.  As  soon  as  one  goes  out  of 
Paris,  one  finds  that  every  home  'produce  is 
cheaper  in  France  than  it  is  in  England,  and 
that  the  prices  decrease  further  when  we  go 
farther  East  on  the  Continent. 

There  is  another  feature  still  more  unfavour¬ 
able  for  this  country  :  namely,  the  enormous 
development  of  the  class  of  middlemen  who 
stand  between  the  importer  and  the  home 
producer  on  the  one  side  and  the  consumer 
on  the  other.  We  have  lately  heard  a  good 
deal  about  the  quite  disproportionate  part  of 
the  prices  we  pay  which  goes  into  the  middle¬ 
man’s  pockets.  We  have  all  heard  of  the 
East-end  clergyman  who  was  compelled  to 
become  butcher  in  order  to  save  his  parish¬ 
ioners  from  the  greedy  middleman.  We  read 
in  the  papers  that  many  farmers  of  the  midland 
counties  do  not  realise  more  than  9d.  for  a 
pound  of  butter,  while  the  customer  pays  from 
Is.  6d.  to  Is.  8d.  ;  and  that  from  Hd.  to  2d.  for 
the  quart  of  milk  is  all  that  the  Cheshire  farmers 
can  get,  while  we  pay  4d.  for  the  adulterated, 
and  5d.  for  the  unadulterated  milk.  An 


140 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


analysis  of  the  Covent  Garden  prices  and  a 
comparison  of  the  same  with  retail  prices,  which 
is  being  made  from  time  to  time  in  the  daily 
papers,  proves  that  the  customer  pays  for 
vegetables  at  the  rate  of  6d.  to  Is.,  and  some¬ 
times  more,  for  each  penny  realised  by  the 
grower.  But  in  a  country  of  imported  food 
it  must  be  so  :  the  grower  who  himself  sells 
his  own  produce  disappears  from  its  markets, 
and  in  his  place  appears  the  middleman.*  If 
we  move,  however,  towards  the  East,  and  go  to 
Belgium,  Germany,  and  Russia,  we  find  that 
the  cost  of  living  is  more  and  more  reduced, 
so  that  finally  we  find  that  in  Russia,  which 
remains  still  agricultural,  wheat  costs  one-half 
or  two-thirds  of  its  London  prices,  and  meat 
is  sold  throughout  the  provinces  at  about 
ten  farthings  (kopecks)  the  pound.  And  we 
may  therefore  hold  that  it  is  not  yet  proved  at 
all  that  it  is  cheaper  to  live  on  imported  food 
than  to  grow  it  ourselves. 

But  if  we  analyse  price,  and  make  a  distinction 
between  its  different  elements,  the  disadvantage 
becomes  still  more  apparent.  If  we  compare, 

*  During  the  winter  of  1890  a  friend  of  mine,  who  lived  in 
a  London  suburb,  used  to  get  his  butter  from  Bavaria  per  parcel 
post.  It  cost  him  10s.  the  eleven  pounds  in  Bavaria,  parcel 
post  inclusive  (2s.  2d.),  6d.  for  the  money  order,  and  2£d.  the 
letter  ;  total,  less  than  11s.  Butter  of  an  inferior  quality  (out 
of  comparison),  with  10  to  15  per  cent,  of  water  inclusive,  was 
sold  in  London  at  Is.  6d.  the  lb.  at  the  same  time. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


141 


for  instance,  the  costs  of  growing  wheat  in  this 
country  and  in  Russia,  we  are  told  that  in  the 
United  Kingdom  the  hundredweight  of  wheat 
cannot  be  grown  at  less  than  8s.  7d.  ;  while  in 
Russia  the  costs  of  production  of  the  same  hun¬ 
dredweight  are  estimated  at  from  3s.  6d.  to 
4s.  9d.*  The  difference  is  enormous,  and  it 
would  still  remain  very  great  even  if  we  admit 
that  there  is  some  exaggeration  in  the  former 
figure.  But  why  this  difference  ?  Are  the  Rus¬ 
sian  labourers  paid  so  much  less  for  their  work  ? 
Their  money  wages  surely  are  much  lower,  but 
the  difference  is  equalised  as  soon  as  we  reckon 
their  wages  in  produce.  The  twelve  shillings  a 
week  of  the  British  agricultural  labourer  repre¬ 
sents  the  same  amount  of  wheat  in  Britain  as 
the  six  shillings  a  week  of  the  Russian  labourer 
represents  in  Russia.  As  to  the  supposed  pro¬ 
digious  fertility  of  the  soil  in  the  Russian  prairies, 


*  The  data  for  the  calculation  of  the  cost  of  production  of 
wheat  in  this  country  are  those  given  by  the  Mark  Lane  Express  ; 
they  will  be  found  in  a  digestible  form  in  an  article  on  wheat¬ 
growing  in  the  Quarterly  Review  for  April,  1887,  and  in  W.  E. 
Bear’s  book,  The  British  Farmer  and  his  Competitors,  London 
(Cassell),  1888.  Although  they  are  a  little  above  the  average, 
the  crop  taken  for  the  calculations  is  also  above  the  average. 
A  similar  inquiry  has  been  made  on  a  large  scale  by  the  Russian 
Provincial  Assemblies,  and  the  whole  was  summed  up  in  an 
elaborate  paper,  in  the  Vyestnilc  Promyshlennosti,  No.  49,  1887. 
To  compare  the  paper  kopecks  with  pence  I  took  the  rouble  at 
of  its  nominal  value  :  such  was  its  average  quotation  during 
the  year  1886.  I  took  475  English  lb.  in  the  quarter  of  wheat. 


142 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


it  is  a  fallacy.  Crops  of  from  sixteen  to  twenty- 
three  bushels  per  acre  are  considered  good  crops 
in  Russia,  while  the  average  hardly  reaches 
thirteen  bushels,  even  in  the  corn-exporting  parts 
of  the  empire.  Besides,  the  amout  of  labour 
which  is  necessary  to  grow  wheat  in  Russia  with 
no  thrashing-machines,  with  a  plough  dragged 
by  a  horse  hardly  worth  the  name,  with  no  roads 
for  transport,  and  so  on,  is  certainly  much  greater 
than  the  amount  of  labour  which  is  necessary 
to  grow  the  same  amount  of  wheat  in  Western 
Europe. 

When  brought  to  the  London  market,  Russian 
wheat  was  sold  in  1887  at  31s.  the  quarter,  while 
it  appeared  from  the  same  Mark  Lane  Express 
figures  that  the  quarter  of  wheat  could  not  be 
grown  in  this  country  at  less  than  36s.  8d.,  even 
if  the  straw  be  sold,  which  is  not  always  the 
case.  But  the  difference  of  the  land  rent  in 
both  countries  would  alone  account  for  the  differ¬ 
ence  of  prices.  In  the  wheat  belt  of  Russia,  where 
the  average  rent  stood  at  about  12s.  per  acre, 
and  the  crop  was  from  fifteen  to  twenty  bushels, 
the  rent  amounted  to  from  3s.  6d.  to  5s.  8d.  in  the 
costs  of  production  of  each  quarter  of  Russian 
wheat  ;  while  in  this  country,  where  the  rent  and 
taxes  are  valued  (in  the  Mark  Lane  Exjpress 
figures)  at  no  less  than  40s.  per  each  wheat- 
growing  acre,  and  the  crop  is  taken  at  thirty 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


143 


bushels,  the  rent  amounts  to  10s.  in  the  costs  of 
production  of  each  quarter.*  Rut  even  if  we 
take  only  30s.  per  acre  of  rent  and  taxes,  and  an 
average  crop  of  twenty-eight  bushels,  we  still 
have  8s.  8d.  out  of  the  sale  price  of  each  quarter 
of  wheat,  which  goes  to  the  landlord  and  the 
State.  If  it  costs  so  much  more  in  money  to 
grow  wheat  in  this  country,  while  the  amount  of 
labour  is  so  much  less  in  this  country  than  in 
Russia,  it  is  due  to  the  very  great  height  of  the 
land  rents  attained  during  the  years  1860-1880. 
Rut  this  growth  itself  was  due  to  the  facilities 
for  realising  large  profits  on  the  sale  of  manu¬ 
factured  goods  abroad.  The  false  condition  of 
Rritish  rural  economy,  not  the  infertility  of  the 
soil,  is  thus  the  chief  cause  of  the  Russian 
competition. 

Twenty-five  years  have  passed  since  I  wrote 
these  lines — the  agricultural  crisis  provoked  by 
the  competition  of  cheap  American  wheat  being 
at  that  time  at  its  climax,  and,  I  am  sorry  to 
say,  I  must  leave  these  lines  such  as  they  were 
written.  I  do  not  mean,  of  course,  that  no 
adaptation  to  the  new  conditions  created  by  the 
fall  in  the  prices  of  wheat  should  have  taken 

*  The  rents  have  declined  since  1887,  but  the  prices  of  wheat 
also  went  down.  It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  as  the  best  acres 
only  are  selected  for  wrheat-growing,  the  rent  for  each  acre 
upon  which  wheat  is  grown  must  be  taken  higher  than  the 
average  rent  per  acre  in  a  farm  of  from  200  to  300  acres. 


144 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


place  during  the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  in  the 
sense  of  a  more  intensive  culture  and  a  better 
utilisation  of  the  land.  On  the  contrary,  I  men¬ 
tion  in  different  parts  of  this  book  the  progress 
accomplished  of  late  in  the  development  of 
separate  branches  of  intensive  culture,  such  as 
fruit-cuiiure,  market-gardening,  culture  under 
glass,  French  gardening,  and  poultry  farming, 
and  I  also  indicate  the  different  steps  taken  to 
promote  further  improvements,  such  as  better 
conditions  of  transport,  co-operation  among  the 
farmers,  and  especially  the  development  of  small 
holdings. 

However,  after  having  taken  into  account  all 
these  improvements,  one  cannot  but  see  with 
regret  that  the  same  regressive  movement  in 
British  agriculture,  which  began  in  the  ’seventies, 
continues  still ;  and  while  more  and  more  of 
the  land  that  was  once  under  the  plough  goes 
out  of  culture,  no  corresponding  increase  in  the 
quantities  of  live  stock  is  to  be  seen.  And  if  we 
consult  the  mass  of  books  and  review  articles 
which  have  been  dealing  lately  with  this  subject, 
we  see  that  all  the  writers  recognise  that  British 
agriculture  must  adapt  itself  to  the  new  conditions 
by  a  thorough  reform  of  its  general  character  ; 
and  yet  the  same  writers  recognise  that  only  a 
few  steps  were  taken  till  now  in  the  proper  direc¬ 
tion,  and  none  of  them  was  taken  with  a  sufficient 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


145 


energy.  Society  at  large  remains  indifferent  to 
the  needs  of  British  agriculture. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  competition 
of  American  wheat  has  made  the  same  havoc 
in  the  agriculture  of  most  European  countries — 
especially  in  France  and  Belgium  ;  but  in  the 
last  two  countries  the  adaptations  which  were 
necessary  to  resist  the  effects  of  the  competition 
have  already  taken  place  to  a  great  extent. 
Both  in  Belgium  and  in  France  the  American 
imports  gave  a  new  impetus  toward  a  more 
intensive  utilisation  of  the  soil,  and  this  impetus 
was  strongest  in  Belgium,  where  no  attempt  was 
made  to  protect  agriculture  by  an  increase  of  the 
import  duties,  as  was  the  case  in  France.  On  the 
contrary,  the  duties  upon  imported  wheat  were 
abolished  in  Belgium  precisely  at  the  time  when 
the  American  competition  began  to  be  felt — 
that  is,  between  1870  and  1880. 

It  was  not  only  in  England  that  the  fall  in  the 
prices  of  wheat  was  felt  acutely  by  the  farmers. 
In  France,  the  hectolitre  of  wheat  (very  nearly 
three  bushels),  which  was  sold  at  18s.  lOd.  in 
1871-1875,  fell  to  15s.  5d.  in  1881-1885,  and  to 
12s.  6d.  in  1893 ;  and  the  same  must  have  been 
in  Belgium,  the  more  so  as  the  protective  duties 
were  abolished.  But  here  is  what  Mr.  Seebohm 
Rowntree  says  about  the  effect  of  the  prices  in  his 
admirable  book  on  land  and  labour  in  Belgium  : — 


146 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


“  For  a  time  the  Belgian  agriculturist  was  hardly  hit,  but 
gradually  he  adjusted  himself  to  the  new  conditions.  His 
cultivation  became  more  intensive,  he  made  more  and  more 
use  of  co-operation  in  various  directions,  and  he  devoted  him¬ 
self  to  new  branches  of  agriculture,  especially  the  raising  of  live 
stock  and  garden  produce.  He  began  to  realise  the  value  of 
artificial  manures,  and  to  acknowledge  that  Science  could  help 
him.” — Land  and  Labour ,  p.  147. 

These  words  by  Mr.  Rowntree  are  fully  con¬ 
firmed  by  the  change  in  the  general  aspects  of 
the  Belgian  agriculture,  as  they  appear  from 
the  official  statistical  data.  The  same  must 
be  said  of  France.  The  above-mentioned  fall 
in  prices  induced  agriculturists  to  intensify  their 
methods  of  culture.  I  have  mentioned  already 
the  rapid  spreading  of  agricultural  machinery 
among  the  French  peasants  during  the  last 
twenty  years  ;  and  I  must  mention  also  the 
equally  remarkable  increase  in  the  amounts  of 
chemical  manure  used  by  the  peasants  ;  the 
sudden  development  of  agricultural  syndicates 
since  1884  ;  the  extension  taken  by  co-oper¬ 
ation  ;  the  new  organisation  of  transport  with 
cool  storage,  or  in  heated  cars,  for  the  export 
of  fruit  and  flowers  ;  the  development  taken 
by  special  industrial  cultures ;  and  still  more  so 
the  immense  development  of  gardening  in  the 
South  of  France  and  market-gardening  in  the 
North.  All  these  adaptations  were  introduced 
on  such  a  scale  that  one  is  bound  to  recognise 
that  the  crisis  has  had  the  effect  of  giving  quite 


OF  AGRICULTURE.  147 

a  new  aspect  to  French  agriculture,  taken  as  a 
whole. 

Much  more  ought  to  be  said  with  regard  to 
the  American  competition,  and  therefore  I  must 
refer  the  reader  to  the  remarkable  series  of 
articles  dealing  with  the  whole  of  the  subject 
which  Schaeffle  published  in  1886  in  the  Zeit- 
schrift  fur  die  gesammte  Staatswissenschaft,  and 
to  the  most  elaborate  article  on  the  costs  of 
growing  wheat  all  over  the  world  which  appeared 
in  April,  1887,  in  the  Quarterly  Review .  These 
articles  were  written  at  the  time  when  American 
competition  was  something  new  and  made  much 
havoc  in  English  agriculture,  causing  a  fall  of 
from  30  to  50  per  cent,  in  the  rents  of  land 
for  agricultural  purposes.  But  the  conclusions 
of  these  two  writers  were  fully  corroborated 
by  the  yearly  reports  of  the  American  Board  of 
Agriculture,  and  Schaeffle’s  previsions  were 
fully  confirmed  by  the  subsequent  reports  of 
Mr.  J.  R.  Dodge.  It  appeared  from  these  works 
that  the  fertility  of  the  American  soil  had  been 
grossly  exaggerated,  as  the  masses  of  wheat  which 
America  sent  to  Europe  from  its  north-western 
farms  were  grown  on  a  soil  the  natural  fertility 
of  which  is  not  higher,  and  often  lower,  than  the 
average  fertility  of  the  unmanured  European 
soil.  The  Casselton  farm  in  Dakota,  with  its 


148 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


twenty  bushels  per  acre,  was  an  exception  ;  while 
the  average  crop  of  the  chief  wheat-growing 
States  in  the  West  was  only  eleven  to  twelve 
bushels.  In  order  to  find  a  fertile  soil  in 
America,  and  crops  of  from  thirty  to  forty  bushels, 
one  must  go  to  the  old  Eastern  States,  where  the 
soil  is  made  by  man’s  hands.* 

The  same  applies  to  the  American  supplies  of 
meat.  Schaeffie  pointed  out  that  the  great  mass 
of  live  stock  which  appeared  in  the  census  of 
cattle  in  the  States  was  not  reared  in  the  prairies, 
but  in  the  stables  of  the  farms,  in  the  same  way 
as  in  Europe ;  as  to  the  prairies,  he  found  on  them 
only  one-eleventh  part  of  the  American  horned 
cattle,  one-fifth  of  the  sheep  and  one-twenty- 
first  of  the  pigs.f  “  Natural  fertility  ”  being  thus 
out  of  question,  we  must  look  for  social  causes ; 
and  we  have  them,  for  the  Western  States,  in 
the  cheapness  of  land  and  a  proper  organisation 
of  production  ;  and  for  the  Eastern  States  in 
the  rapid  progress  of  intensive  high  farming. 

*  L.  de  Lavergne  pointed  out  as  far  back  as  fifty  years 
ago  that  the  States  were  at  that  time  the  chief  importers  of 
guano.  Already  in  1854  they  imported  it  almost  to  the  same 
amount  as  this  country,  and  they  had,  moreover,  sixty-two 
manufactories  of  guano  which  supplied  it  to  the  amount  of 
sixteen  times  the  imports.  Compare  also  Ronna’s  I? agrictdture 
aux  Etats  Unis,  1881  ;  Lecouteux,  Le  btt  ;  and  J.  R.  Dodge’s 
Annual  Report  of  the  American  Department  of  Agriculture  for 
1885  and  1886.  Schaeffle’s  work  was  also  summed  up  in 
Schmoller’s  Jahrhuch. 

f  See  also  J.  R.  Dodge’s  Farm  and  Factory ,  New  York,  1884. 


OF  AGRICULTURE.  149 

It  is  evident  that  the  methods  of  culture  must 
vary  according  to  different  conditions.  In  the 
vast  prairies  of  North  America,  where  land  could 
be  bought  from  8s.  to  40s.  the  acre,  and  where 
spaces  of  from  100  to  150  square  miles  in  one 
block  could  be  given  to  wheat  culture,  special 
methods  of  culture  were  applied  and  the  results 
were  excellent.  Land  was  bought — not  rented. 
In  the  autumn,  whole  studs  of  horses  were  brought, 
and  the  tilling  and  sowing  were  done  with  the 
aid  of  formidable  ploughs  and  sowing  machines. 
Then  the  horses  were  sent  to  graze  in  the  moun¬ 
tains  ;  the  men  were  dismissed,  and  one  man, 
occasionally  two  or  three,  remained  to  winter 
on  the  farm.  In  the  spring  the  owners’  agents 
began  to  beat  the  inns  for  hundreds  of  miles 
round,  and  engaged  labourers  and  tramps,  both 
freely  supplied  by  Europe,  for  the  crop.  Bat¬ 
talions  of  men  were  marched  to  the  wheat  fields, 
and  were  camped  there  ;  the  horses  were  brought 
from  the  mountains,  and  in  a  week  or  two  the 
crop  was  cut,  thrashed,  winnowed,  put  in  sacks, 
by  specially  invented  machines,  and  sent  to  the 
next  elevator,  or  directly  to  the  ships  which 
carried  it  to  Europe.  Whereupon  the  men 
were  disbanded  again,  the  horses  were  sent  back 
to  the  grazing  grounds,  or  sold,  and  again  only 
a  couple  of  men  remained  on  the  farm. 

The  crop  from  each  acre  was  small,  but  the 


150 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


machinery  was  so  perfected  that  in  this  way 
300  days  of  one  man’s  labour  produced  from 
200  to  300  quarters  of  wheat ;  in  other  words — 
the  area  of  land  being  of  no  account — every  man 
produced  in  one  day  his  yearly  bread  food  (eight 
and  a  half  bushels  of  wheat) ;  and  taking  into 
account  all  subsequent  labour,  it  was  calculated 
that  the  work  of  300  men  in  one  single  day  deliv¬ 
ered  to  the  consumer  at  Chicago  the  flour  that  is 
required  for  the  yearly  food  of  250  persons. 
Twelve  hours  and  a  half  of  work  are  thus  required 
in  Chicago  to  supply  one  man  with  his  yearly 
provision  of  wheat-flour. 

Under  the  special  conditions  offered  in  the 
Far  West  this  certainly  was  an  appropriate 
method  for  increasing  all  of  a  sudden  the  wheat 
supplies  of  mankind.  It  answered  its  purpose 
when  large  territories  of  unoccupied  land  were 
opened  to  enterprise.  But  it  could  not  answer 
for  ever.  Under  such  a  system  of  culture  the 
soil  was  soon  exhausted,  the  crop  declined,  and 
intensive  agriculture  (which  aims  at  high  crops  on 
a  limited  area)  had  soon  to  be  resorted  to.  Such 
was  the  case  in  Iowa  in  the  year  1878.  Up  till 
then,  Iowa  was  an  emporium  for  wheat-growing 
on  the  lines  just  indicated.  But  the  soil  was 
already  exhausted,  and  when  a  disease  came  the 
wheat  plants  had  no  force  to  resist  it.  In  a  few 
weeks  nearly  all  the  wheat  crop,  which  was  ex- 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


151 


pected  to  beat  all  previous  records,  was  lost ; 
eight  to  ten  bushels  per  acre  of  bad  wheat  were 
all  that  could  be  cropped.  The  result  was  that 
“  mammoth  farms  ”  had  to  be  broken  up  into 
small  farms,  and  that  the  Iowa  farmers  (after  a 
terrible  crisis  of  short  duration — everything  is 
rapid  in  America)  took  to  a  more  intensive 
culture.  Now,  they  are  not  behind  France  in 
wheat  culture,  as  they  already  grow  an  average 
of  sixteen  and  a  hah  bushels  per  acre  on  an  area 
of  more  than  2,000,000  acres,  and  they  will  soon 
win  ground.  Somehow,  with  the  aid  of  manure 
and  improved  methods  of  farming,  they  compete 
admirably  with  the  mammoth  farms  of  the  Far 
West. 

In  fact,  over  and  over  again  it  was  pointed 
out,  by  Schaeffle,  Semler,  Oetken,  and  many  other 
writers,  that  the  force  of  “  American  competi¬ 
tion  ”  is  not  in  its  mammoth  farms,  but  in  the 
countless  small  farms  upon  which  wheat  is  grown 
in  the  same  way  as  it  is  grown  in  Europe — that 
is,  with  manuring — but  with  a  better  organised 
production  and  facilities  for  sale,  and  without  be¬ 
ing  compelled  to  pay  to  the  landlord  a  toll  of  one- 
third  part,  or  more,  of  the  selling  price  of  each 
quarter  of  wheat.  However,  it  was  only  after  I 
had  myself  made  a  tour  in  the  prairies  of  Mani¬ 
toba  in  1897,  and  those  of  Ohio  in  1901,  that  I 
could  realise  the  full  truth  of  the  just-mentioned 


152 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


views.  The  15,000,000  to  20,000,000  bushels 
of  wheat,  which  are  exported  every  year  from 
Manitoba,  are  grown  almost  entirely  in  farms 
of  one  or  two  “  quarter-sections  ” — that  is,  of 
160  and  320  acres.  The  ploughing  is  made  in  the 
usual  way,  and  in  an  immense  majority  of  cases 
the  farmers  buy  the  reaping  and  binding  machines 
(the  “  binders  ”)  by  associating  in  groups  of 
four.  The  thrashing  machine  is  rented  by  the 
farmer  for  one  or  two  days,  and  the  farmer  carts 
his  wheat  to  the  elevator  with  his  own  horses, 
either  to  sell  it  immediately,  or  to  keep  it  at  the 
elevator  if  he  is  in  no  immediate  need  of  money 
and  hopes  to  get  a  higher  price  in  one  month  or 
two.  In  short,  in  Manitoba  one  is  especially 
struck  with  the  fact  that,  even  under  a  system 
of  keen  competition,  the  middle-size  farm  has 
completely  beaten  the  old  mammoth  farm, 
and  that  it  is  not  manufacturing  wheat  on  a 
grand  scale  which  pays  best.  It  is  also  most  in¬ 
teresting  to  note  that  thousands  and  thousands 
of  farmers  produce  mountains  of  wheat  in  the 
Canadian  province  of  Toronto  and  in  the  Eastern 
States,  although  the  land  is  not  prairie-land  at 
all,  and  the  farms  are,  as  a  rule,  small. 

The  force  of  “  American  competition  ”  is  thus 
not  in  the  possibility  of  having  hundreds  of  acres 
of  wheat  in  one  block.  It  lies  in  the  ownership 
of  the  land,  in  a  system  of  culture  which  is  ap- 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


153 


propriate  to  the  character  of  the  country,  in 
a  widely  developed  spirit  of  association,  and, 
finally,  in  a  number  of  institutions  and  customs 
intended  to  lift  the  agriculturist  and  his  profes¬ 
sion  to  a  high  level  which  is  unknown  in  Europe. 

In  Europe  we  do  not  realise  at  all  what  is 
done  in  the  States  and  Canada  in  the  interests 
of  agriculture.  In  every  American  State,  and 
in  every  distinct  region  of  Canada,  there  is  an 
experimental  farm,  and  all  the  work  of  pre¬ 
liminary  experiment  upon  new  varieties  of 
wheat,  oats,  barley,  fodder  and  fruit,  which  the 
farmer  has  mostly  to  make  himself  in  Europe,  is 
made  under  the  best  scientific  conditions  at  the 
experimental  farms,  on  a  small  scale  first  and 
on  a  large  scale  next.  The  results  of  all  these 
researches  and  experiments  are  not  merely 
rendered  accessible  to  the  farmer  who  would  like 
to  knowy  them,  but  they  are  brought  to  his 
knowledge,  and,  so  to  speak,  are  forced  upon  his 
attention  by  every  possible  means.  The  “  Bul¬ 
letins  ”  of  the  experimental  stations  are  dis¬ 
tributed  in  hundreds  of  thousands  of  copies  ; 
visits  to  the  farms  are  organised  in  such  a  way 
that  thousands  of  farmers  should  inspect  the 
stations  every  year,  and  be  shown  by  specialists 
the  results  obtained,  either  with  new  varieties 
of  plants  or  under  various  new  methods  of  treat¬ 
ment.  Correspondence  is  carried  on  with  the 


154 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


farmers  on  such  a  scale  that,  for  instance,  at 
Ottawa,  the  experimental  farm  sends  out  every 
year  a  hundred  thousand  letters  and  packets. 
Every  farmer  can  get,  free  of  charge  and  postage, 
five  pounds  of  seed  of  any  variety  of  cereals, 
out  of  which  he  can  get  next  year  the  necessary 
seed  for  sowing  several  acres.  And,  finally,  in 
every  small  and  remote  township  there  are  held 
farmers’  meetings,  at  which  special  lecturers, 
who  are  sent  out  by  the  experimental  farms  or 
the  local  agricultural  societies,  discuss  with  the 
farmers  in  an  informal  way  the  results  of  last 
year’s  experiments  and  discoveries  relative  to 
every  branch  of  agriculture,  horticulture,  cattle- 
breeding,  dairying  and  agricultural  co-operation.* 

American  agriculture  really  offers  an  imposing 
sight — not  in  the  wheat  fields  of  the  Far  West, 
which  soon  will  become  a  thing  of  the  past,  but 
in  the  development  of  rational  agriculture  and 
the  forces  which  promote  it.  Read  the  descrip- 

*  Some  additional  information  on  this  subject  will  be  found 
in  the  articles  of  mine  :  “  Some  Resources  of  Canada,”  and 
“  Recent  Science,”  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  January,  1898, 
and  October,  1897.  I  see  from  the  Experimeutal  Farms’  Reports 
for  1909  that  on  the  average  38,000  samples  of  seeds  are  sent 
in  this  way  to  the  farmers  every  year ;  in  1909  more  than  38,000 
farmers  united  in  experiments  as  to  the  relative  merits  of  the 
different  sorts  of  wheat,  oats,  and  barley  under  trial.  I  think 
that  my  friend,  Dr.  William  Saunders,  is  quite  right  in  saying 
that  this  system  of  supplying  a  great  number  of  farmers  with 
small  quantities  of  choice  seeds  lias  contributed  notably  to  in¬ 
crease  the  yield  of  corn  in  Canada. 


I 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


155 


tion  of  an  agricultural  exhibition,  “  the  State’s 
fair,”  in  some  small  town  of  Iowa,  with  its 
70,000  farmers  camping  with  their  families  in 
tents  during  the  fair’s  week,  studying,  learning, 
buying,  and  selling,  and  enjoying  life.  You  see 
a  national  fete,  and  you  feel  that  you  deal  with 
a  nation  in  which  agriculture  is  in  respect.  Or 
read  the  publications  of  the  scores  of  experimental 
stations,  whose  reports  are  distributed  broadcast 
over  the  country,  and  are  read  by  the  farmers  and 
discussed  at  countless  “  farmers’  meetings.” 
Consult  the  “  Transactions  ”  and  “  Bulletins  ” 
of  the  countless  agricultural  societies,  not  royal 
but  popular ;  study  the  grand  enterprises  for 
irrigation ;  and  you  will  feel  that  American 
agriculture  is  a  real  force,  imbued  with  life,  which 
no  longer  fears  mammoth  farms,  and  needs  not 
to  cry  like  a  child  for  protection. 

“  Intensive  ”  agriculture  and  gardening  are 
already  by  this  time  as  much  a  feature  of  the 
treatment  of  the  soil  in  America  as  they  are  in 
Belgium.  As  far  back  as  the  year  1880,  nine 
States,  among  which  were  Georgia,  Virginia  and 
the  two  Carolinas,  bought  £5,750,000  worth  of 
artificial  manure  ;  and  we  are  told  that  by  this 
time  the  use  of  artificial  manure  has  immensely 
spread  towards  the  West.  In  Iowa,  where 
mammoth  farms  used  to  exist  twenty  years 
ago,  sown  grass  is  already  in  use,  and  it  is  highly 


156 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


recommended  by  both  the  Iowa  Agricultural 
Institute  and  the  numerous  local  agricultural 
papers  ;  while  at  the  agricultural  competitions 
the  highest  rewards  are  given,  not  for  extensive 
farming,  but  for  high  crops  on  small  areas. 
Thus,  at  a  recent  competition  in  which  hundreds 
of  farmers  took  part,  the  first  ten  prizes  were 
awarded  to  ten  farmers  who  had  grown,  on  three 
acres  each,  from  262  to  346|  bushels  of  Indian 
corn,  in  other  words  from  87  to  115  bushels  to 
the  acre.  This  shows  where  the  ambition  of  the 
Iowa  farmer  goes.  In  Minnesota,  prizes  were 
given  already  for  crops  of  300  to  1,120  bushels 
of  potatoes  to  the  acre — that  is,  from  eight  and 
a  quarter  to  thirty-one  tons  to  the  acre — while 
the  average  potato  crop  in  Great  Britain  is 
only  six  tons. 

At  the  same  time  market-gardening  is  im¬ 
mensely  extending  in  America.  In  the  market- 
gardens  of  Florida  we  see  such  crops  as  445  to 
600  bushels  of  onions  per  acre,  400  bushels  of 
tomatoes,  700  bushels  of  sweet  potatoes,  which 
testify  to  a  high  development  of  culture.  As  to 
the  “  truck  farms  ”  (market-gardening  for  ex¬ 
port  by  steamer  and  rail),  they  covered,  in  1892, 
400,000  acres,  and  the  fruit  farms  in  the  suburbs 
of  Norfolk,  in  Virginia,  were  described  by  Prof. 
Ch.  Baltet  *  as  real  models  of  that  sort  of  cul- 
*  U  Horticulture  dans  les  cinq  Parties  du  Monde.  Paris,  1895. 


157 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 

ture — a  very  high  testimony  in  the  mouth  of  a 
French  gardener  who  himself  comes  from  the 
model  marais  of  Troyes. 

And  while  people  in  London  continue  to  pay 
almost  all  the  year  round  twopence  for  a  lettuce 
(very  often  imported  from  Paris),  they  have  at 
Chicago  and  Boston  those  unique  establishments 
in  the  world  where  lettuces  are  grown  in  immense 
greenhouses  with  the  aid  of  electric  light  ;  and 
we  must  not  forget  that  although  the  discovery 
of  4  4  electric  ”  growth  is  European  (it  is  due  to 
Siemens),  it  was  at  the  Cornell  University  that 
it  was  proved  by  a  series  of  experiments  that 
electric  light  is  an  admirable  aid  for  forwarding 
the  growth  of  the  green  parts  of  the  plant,  r 

In  short,  America,  which  formerly'  took  the 
lead  in  bringing  “  extensive  ”  agriculture  to 
perfection,  now  takes  the  lead  in  “  intensive,” 
or  forced,  agriculture  as  well.  In  this  adapta¬ 
bility  lies  the  real  force  of  American  competi¬ 
tion. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


THE  POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE — (continued). 

The  doctrine  of  Malthus — Progress  in  wheat-growing — East 
Flanders — Channel  Islands — Potato  crops,  past  and  present 
— Irrigation — Major  Hallet’s  experiments — Planted  wheat. 

FEW  books  have  exercised  so  pernicious  an 
influence  upon  the  general  development 
of  economic  thought  as  Malthus’ s  Essay  on  the 
Principle  of  Population  exercised  for  three 
'  consecutive  generations.  It  appeared  at  the 
right  time,  like  all  books  which  have  had  any 
influence  at  all,  and  it  summed  up  ideas  already 
current  in  the  minds  of  the  wealth-possessing 
minority.  It  was  precisely  when  the  ideas  of 
equality  and  liberty,  awakened  by  the  French 
and  American  revolutions,  were  still  perme¬ 
ating  the  minds  of  the  poor,  while  the  richer 
classes  had  become  tired  of  their  amateur  ex¬ 
cursions  into  the  same  domains,  that  Malthus 
came  to  assert,  in  reply  to  Godwin,  that  no 
equality  is  possible  ;  that  the  poverty  of  the 

/many  is  not  due  to  institutions,  but  is  a  natural 
law.  Population,  he  wrote,  grows  too  rapidly 
and  the  new-comers  find  no  room  at  the  feast  of 
nature  ;  and  that  law  cannot  be  altered  by  any 


POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE.  159 


change  of  institutions.  He  thus  gave  to  the 
rich  a  kind  of  scientific  argument  against  the 
ideas  of  equality  ;  and  we  know  that  though 
all  dominion  is  based  upon  force,  force  itself 
begins  to  totter  as  soon  as  it  is  no  longer  sup¬ 
ported  by  a  firm  belief  in  its  own  rightfulness. 
As  to  the  poorer  classes — who  always  feel  the 
influence  of  ideas  circulating  at  a  given  time 
amid  the  wealthier  classes — it  deprived  them 
of  the  very  hope  of  improvement ;  it  made 
them  sceptical  as  to  the  promises  of  the  social 
reformers  ;  and  to  this  day  the  most  advanced 
reformers  entertain  doubts  as  to  the  pos¬ 
sibility  of  satisfying  the  needs  of  all,  in  case 
there  should  be  a  claim  for  their  satisfaction, 
and  a  temporary  welfare  of  the  labourers  resulted 
in  a  sudden  increase  of  population. 

Science,  down  to  the  present  day,  remains 
permeated  with  Malthus’s  teachings.  Political 
economy  continues  to  base  its  reasoning  upon  a 
tacit  admission  of  the  impossibility  of  rapidly 
increasing  the  productive  powers  of  a  nation, 
and  of  thus  giving  satisfaction  to  all  wants. 
This  postulate  stands,  undiscussed,  in  the 
background  of  whatever  political  economy, 
classical  or  socialist,  has  to  say  about  exchange- 
value,  wages,  sale  of  labour  force,  rent,  exchange, 
and  consumption.  Political  economy  never 
rises  above  the  hypothesis  of  a  limited  and  in- 


160 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


sufficient  supply  of  the  necessaries  of  life ;  it 
takes  it  for  granted.  And  all  theories  con¬ 
nected  with  political  economy  retain  the  same 
erroneous  principle.  Nearly  all  socialists,  too, 
admit  the  postulate.  Nay,  even  in  biology 
(so  deeply  interwoven  now  with  sociology)  we 
have  recently  seen  the  theory  of  variability  of 
species  borrowing  a  quite  unexpected  support 
from  its  having  been  connected  by  Darwin  and 
Wallace  with  Malthus’s  fundamental  idea,  that 
the  natural  resources  must  inevitably  fail  to 
supply  the  means  of  existence  for  the  rapidly 
multiplying  animals  and  plants.  In  short,  we 
may  say  that  the  theory  of  Malthus,  by  shaping 
into  a  pseudo-scientific  form  the  secret  desires 
of  the  wealth-possessing  classes,  became  the 
foundation  of  a  whole  system  of  practical 
philosophy,  which  permeates  the  minds  of  both 
the  educated  and  uneducated,  and  reacts  (as 
practical  philosophy  always  does)  upon  the 
theoretical  philosophy  of  our  century. 

True,  the  formidable  growth  of  the  pro¬ 
ductive  powders  of  man  in  the  industrial  field, 
Since  he  tamed  steam  and  electricity,  has  some¬ 
what  shaken  Malthus’s  doctrine.  Industrial 
wealth  has  grown  at  a  rate  which  no  possible 
increase  of  population  could  attain,  and  it  can 
grow  with  still  greater  speed.  But  agriculture 
is  still  considered  a  stronghold  of  the  Mai- 


OF  AGRICULTURE 


161 


thusian  pseudo-philosophy.  The  recent  achieve¬ 
ments  of  agriculture  and  horticulture  are  not 
sufficiently  well  known ;  and  while  our  gar¬ 
deners  defy  climate  and  latitude,  acclimatise 
sub-tropical  plants,  raise  several  crops  a  year 
instead  of  one,  and  themselves  make  the  soil 
they  want  for  each  special  culture,  the  econo¬ 
mists  nevertheless  continue  saying  that  the 
surface  of  the  soil  is  limited,  and  still  more  its 
productive  powers  ;  they  still  maintain  that 
a  population  which  should  double  each  thirty 
years  would  soon  be  confronted  by  a  lack 
of  the  necessaries  of  life  ! 

A  few  data  to  illustrate  what  can  be  obtained 
from  the  soil  were  given  in  the  preceding 
chapter.  But  the  deeper  one  goes  into  thd\/ 
subject,  the  more  new  and  striking  data  does  he 
discover,  and  the  more  Malthus’s  fears  appear 
groundless. 

To  begin  with  an  instance  taken  from  culture 
in  the  open  field — namely,  that  of  wheat — we 
come  upon  the  following  interesting  fact.  While 
we  are  so  often  told  that  wheat-growing  does  not 
pay,  and  England  consequently  reduces  from 
year  to  year  the  area  of  its  wheat  fields,  the 
French  peasants  steadily  increase  the  area 
under  wheat,  and  the  greatest  increase  is  due  to 
those  peasant  families  which  themselves  cultivate 


162 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


the  land  they  own.  In  the  course  of  the  nine¬ 
teenth  century  they  have  nearly  doubled  the 
area  under  wheat,  as  well  as  the  returns  from 
each  acre,  so  as  to  increase  almost  fourfold  the 
amount  of  wheat  grown  in  France.* 

At  the  same  time  the  population  has  only 
increased  by  41  per  cent.,  so  that  the  ratio  of 
increase  of  the  wheat  crop  has  been  six  times 
greater  than  the  ratio  of  increase  of  population, 
although  agriculture  has  been  hampered  all  the 
time  by  a  series  of  serious  obstacles — taxation, 
military  service,  poverty  of  the  peasantry,  and 
even,  up  to  1884,  a  severe  prohibition  of  all 
sorts  of  association  among  the  peasants.'j*  It 


*  The  researches  of  Tisserand  may  be  summed  up  as  follows  : 


Year. 

Population 

in 

millions. 

Acres  under 
wheat. 

Average  crop 
in  bushels 
per  acre. 

Wheat  crop  in 
bushels. 

1789 

27*0 

9,884,000 

9 

87,980,000 

1831-41 

33-4 

13,224,000 

15 

194,225,000 

1882-88 

38-2 

17,198,000 

18 

311,619,000 

t  In  a  recent  evaluation,  M.  Auge-Laribe  (U Evolution  de  la 
France  agricole,  Paris,  1912)  arrives  at  the  following  figures  : — 


Years. 

Area  under  wheat. 
Acres. 

Years. 

Area  under  wheat. 
Acres. 

1862 

18,430,000 

1900 

16,960,000 

1882 

17,740,000 

1910 

16,190,000 

1892 

17,690,000 

— 

— 

OF  AGRICULTURE. 


163 


must  also  be  remarked  that  during  the  same 
hundred  years,  and  even  within  the  last  fifty 
years,  market-gardening,  fruit-culture  and  cul¬ 
ture  for  industrial  purposes  have  immensely 
developed  in  France  ;  so  that  there  would  be  no 
exaggeration  in  saying  that  the  French  obtain 
now  from  their  soil  at  least  six  or  seven  times 
more  than  they  obtained  a  hundred  years  ago. 
The  “  means  of  existence  ”  drawn  from  the  soil 
have  thus  grown  about  fifteen  times  quicker 
than  the  population. 

But  the  ratio  of  progress  in  agriculture  is  still 
better  seen  from  the  rise  of  the  standard  of 
requirement  as  regards  cultivation  of  land. 
Some  thirty  years  ago  the  French  considered  a 
crop  very  good  when  it  yielded  twenty-two 
bushels  to  the  acre  ;  but  with  the  same  soil 


The  average  crops  for  each  ten  years  since  1834  are  given  as 
follows  : — 


Years. 

Crops  in  bushels. 

Years. 

Crops  in  bushels. 

1834-43 

1856-65 

1876-85 

190,800,000 

272,900,000 

279,800,000 

1884-95 

1896-1905 

1906-09 

294,700,000 

317,700,000 

333,400,000 

The  wheat  crop  has  thus  increased  in  seventy-five  years  by  74 
per  cent.,  while  the  population  increased  only  by  20  per  cent. 
For  potatoes,  the  increase  is  still  greater  :  while  198,800,000  cwt. 
of  potatoes  were  grown  in  1882,  the  crop  of  1909  was  already 
328,300,000  cwt.,  the  average  yield  of  the  acre  growing  from 
148  cwt.  in  1882  to  212  cwt.  in  1909. 


164 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


the  present  requirement  is  at  least  thirty-three 
bushels,  while  in  the  best  soils  the  crop  is  good 
only  when  it  yields  from  forty-three  to  forty- 
eight  bushels,  and  occasionally  the  produce  is 
as  much  as  fifty-five  bushels  to  the  acre.  * 
There  are  whole  countries — Hesse,  for  example 
— which  are  satisfied  only  when  the  average 
crop  attains  thirty-seven  bushels,  or  Denmark, 
where  the  average  crop  (1908-1910)  is  forty-one 
bushels  per  acre  (forty-four  bushels  in  1910).')* 
As  to  the  experimental  farms  of  Central  France, 
they  produce  from  year  to  year,  over  large  areas, 
forty-one  bushels  to  the  acre ;  and  a  number 
of  farms  in  Northern  France  regularly  yield, 
year  after  year,  from  fifty-five  to  sixty-eight 
bushels  to  the  acre.  Occasionally  even  so  much 
as  eighty  bushels  have  been  obtained  upon 
limited  areas  under  special  care.J  In  fact, 
Prof.  Grandeau  considers  it  proved  that  by 
combining  a  series  of  such  operations  as  the 
selection  of  seeds,  sowing  in  rows,  and  proper 
manuring,  the  crops  can  be  largely  increased 

*  Grandeau,  Etudes  agronomiques,  2e  serie.  Paris,  1888. 

t  Although  36  per  cent,  of  the  cultivable  area  is  under 
cereals,  there  were  in  Denmark,  in  1910,  2,253,980  head  of 
cattle,  as  against  1,238,900  in  1871,  and  1,470,100  in  1882. 

t  Risler,  Physiologie  et  Culture  du  BU.  Paris,  1886.  Taking 
the  whole  of  the  wheat  crop  in  France,  we  see  that  the  following 
progress  has  been  realised.  In  1872-1881  the  average  crop  was 
16|  bushels  per  acre.  In  1882-1890  it  attained  17T%  bushels 
per  acre.  Increase  by  14  per  cent,  in  ten  years  (Prof.  C.  Y. 
Garola,  Les  Cir  idles,  p.  70  seq.\. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


165 


over  the  best  present  average,  while  the  cost  of 
production  can  be  reduced  by  50  per  cent,  by 
the  use  of  inexpensive  machinery  ;  to  say  nothing 
of  costly  machines,  like  the  steam  digger,  or  the 
pulverisers  which  make  the  soil  required  for 
each  special  culture.  They  are  now  occasion¬ 
ally  resorted  to  here  and  there,  and  they  surely 
will  come  into  general  use  as  soon  as  humanity 
feels  the  need  of  largely  increasing  its  agricul¬ 
tural  produce. 

In  fact,  a  considerable  progress  has  already 
been  realised  in  French  agriculture  by  labour- 
saving  machinery  during  the  last  twenty-five 
years  ;  but  there  still  remains  an  immense  field 
for  further  improvement.  Thus,  in  1908,  France 
had  already  in  use  25,000  harvesting  machines 
and  1,200  binders  as  against  180  only  of  the 
former  and  sixty  of  the  second,  which  were 
used  in  1882  ;  but  it  is  calculated  that  no  less 
than  375,000  more  harvesting  machines  and 
300,000  mowing  machines  are  required  to  satisfy 
the  needs  of  French  agriculture.  The  same  must 
be  said  as  regards  the  use  of  artificial  manure, 
irrigation,  pumping  machinery,  and  so  on. 

When  we  bear  in  mind  the  very  unfavourable 
conditions  in  which  agriculture  stands  now  all 
over  the  world,  we  must  not  expect  to  find 
considerable  progress  in  its  methods  realised 


166 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


over  wide  regions  ;  we  must  be  satisfied  with 
noting  the  advance  accomplished  in  separate, 
especially  favoured  spots,  where,  for  one  cause 
or  another,  the  tribute  levied  upon  the  agri¬ 
culturist  has  not  been  so  heavy  as  to  stop  all 
possibility  of  progress. 

One  such  example  may  be  seen  in  the  dis¬ 
trict  of  Saffelare  in  East  Flanders.  Thirty 
years  ago,  on  a  territory  of  37,000  acres,  all 
taken,  a  population  of  30,000  inhabitants,  all 
peasants,  not  only  used  to  find  its  food,  but 
managed,  moreover,  to  keep  no  less  than  10,720 
horned  cattle,  3,800  sheep,  1,815  horses  and 
6,550  swine,  to  grow  flax,  and  to  export  various 
agricultural  produce.*  And  during  the  last 
thirty  years  it  has  continued  steadily  to  increase 
its  exports  of  agricultural  produce. 

Another  illustration  of  this  sort  may  be 
taken  from  the  Channel  Islands,  whose  in¬ 
habitants  have  happily  not  known  the  blessings 
of  Homan  law  and  landlordism,  as  they  still  live 
under  the  common  law  of  Normandy.  The 
small  island  of  Jersey,  eight  miles  long  and  less 
than  six  miles  wide,  still  remains  a  land  of  open- 
field  culture  ;  but,  although  it  comprises  only 
28,707  acres,  rocks  included,  it  nourishes  a 
population  of  about  two  inhabitants  to  each 

*  O.  de  Kerchove  de  Dentergken,  La  'petite  Culture  des 
Flandres  beiges,  Gand,  1878. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


167 


acre,  or  1,300  inhabitants  to  the  square  mile, 
and  there  is  not  one  writer  on  agriculture  who, 
after  having  paid  a  visit  to  this  island,  did  not 
praise  the  well-being  of  the  Jersey  peasants 
and  the  admirable  results  which  they  obtain  in 
their  small  farms  of  from  five  to  twenty  acres 
— very  often  less  than  five  acres — by  means  of  a 
rational  and  intensive  culture. 

Most  of  my  readers  will  probably  be  aston¬ 
ished  to  learn  that  the  soil  of  Jersey,  which 
consists  of  decomposed  granite,  with  no  organic 
matter  in  it,  is  not  at  all  of  astonishing  fer¬ 
tility,  and  that  its  climate,  though  more  sunny 
than  the  climate  of  these  isles  *  offers  many 
drawbacks  on  account  of  the  small  amount  of 
sun-heat  during  the  summer  and  of  the  cold 
winds  in  spring.  But  so  it  is  in  reality,  and 
at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  the 
inhabitants  of  Jersey  lived  chiefly  on  imported 
food.  (See  Appendix  L.)  The  successes  ac¬ 
complished  lately  in  Jersey  are  entirely  due  to 
the  amount  of  labour  which  a  dense  population 
is  putting  in  the  land  ;  to  a  system  of  land- 
tenure,  land-transference  and  inheritance  very 
different  from  those  which  prevail  elsewhere  ; 
to  freedom  from  State  taxation  ;  and  to  the 
fact  that  communal  institutions  have  been 
maintained,  down  to  quite  a  recent  period,  while 
a  number  of  communal  habits  and  customs 


168 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


X 

of  mutual  support,  derived  therefrom,  are  alive 
to  the  present  time.  As  to  the  fertility  of  the 
soil,  it  is  made  partly  by  the  sea- weeds  gathered 
free  on  the  sea-coast,  but  chiefly  by  artificial 
manure  fabricated  at  Blaydon-on-Tyne,  out  of  all 
sorts  of  refuse — inclusive  of  bones  shipped  from 
Plevna  and  mummies  of  cats  shipped  from  Egypt. 

It  is  well  known  that  for  the  last  thirty  years 
the  Jersey  peasants  and  farmers  have  been 
growing  early  potatoes  on  a  great  scale,  and 
that  in  this  line  they  have  attained  most  satis¬ 
factory  results.  Their  chief  aim  being  to  have 
the  potatoes  out  as  early  as  possible,  when  they 
fetch  at  the  Jersey  Weigh-Bridge  as  much  as 
£17  and  £20  the  ton,  the  digging  out  of  potatoes 
begins,  in  the  best  sheltered  places,  as  early  as  the 
first  days  of  May,  or  even  at  the  end  of  April. 
Quite  a  system  of  potato-culture,  beginning 
with  the  selection  of  tubers,  the  arrangements 
for  making  them  germinate,  the  selection  of 
properly  sheltered  and  well  situated  plots  of 
ground,  the  choice  of  proper  manure,  and  ending 
with  the  box  in  which  the  potatoes  germinate 
and  which  has  so  many  other  useful  applications, 
— quite  a  system  of  culture  has  been  worked 
out  in  the  island  for  that  purpose  by  the  col¬ 
lective  intelligence  of  the  peasants.* 

*  One  could  not  insist  too  much  on  the  collective  character 
of  the  development  of  that  branch  of  husbandry.  In  many 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


169 


In  the  last  weeks  of  May  and  in  June,  when 
the  export  is  at  its  height,  quite  a  fleet  of 
steamers  runs  between  the  small  island  of 
Jersey  and  various  ports  of  England  and 
Scotland.  Every  day  eight  to  ten  steamers 
enter  the  harbour  of  St.  Holier,  and  in  twenty- 
four  hours  they  are  loaded  with  potatoes  and 
steer  for  London,  Southampton,  Liverpool, 
Newcastle,  and  Scotland.  From  50,000  to  60,000 
tons  of  potatoes,  valued  at  from  £260,000  to 
£500,000,  according  to  the  year,  are  thus  ex¬ 
ported  every  summer  ;  and,  if  the  local  con¬ 
sumption  be  taken  into  account,  we  have  at 
least  60,000  to  70,000  tons  that  are  obtained, 
although  no  more  than  from  6,500  to  7,500 
acres  are  given  to  all  potato  crops,  early  and 
late — early  potatoes,  as  is  well  known,  never 
giving  as  heavy  crops  as  the  later  ones.  Ten 
to  eleven  tons  per  acre  is  thus  the  average, 

places  of  the  South  coast  of  England  early  potatoes  can  also 
be  grown — to  say  nothing  of  Cornwall  and  South  Devon,  where 
potatoes  are  obtained  by  separate  labourers  in  small  quantities 
as  early  as  they  are  obtained  in  Jersey.  But  so  long  as  this 
culture  remains  the  work  of  isolated  growers,  its  results  must 
necessarily  be  inferior  to  those  which  the  Jersey  peasants  obtain 
through  their  collective  experience.  For  the  technical  details 
concerning  potato-culture  in  Jersey,  see  a  paper  by  a  Jersey 
grower  in  the  Journal  of  Horticulture,  22nd  and  29th  May,  1890. 
Considerable  progress  has  been  made  lately  in  Cornwall,  espe¬ 
cially  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Penzance,  in  the  development 
of  potato-growing  and  intensive  market-gardening,  and  one  may 
hope  that  the  successes  of  these  growers  will  incite  others  to 
imitate  their  example. 


170 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


while  in  this  country  the  average  is  only  six 
tons  per  acre. 

As  soon  as  the  potatoes  are  out,  the  second 
crop  of  mangold  or  of  “  three  months’  wheat  ” 
(a  special  variety  of  rapidly  growing  wheat) 
is  sown.  Not  one  day  is  lost  in  putting  it  in. 
The  potato-field  may  consist  of  one  or  two 
acres  only,  but  as  soon  as  one-fourth  part  of  it 
is  cleared  of  the  potatoes  it  is  sown  with  the 
second  crop.  One  may  thus  see  a  small  field 
divided  into  four  plots,  three  of  which  are 
sown  with  wheat  at  five  or  six  days’  distance 
from  each  other,  while  on  the  fourth  plot  the 
potatoes  are  being  dug  out. 

The  admirable  condition  of  the  meadows  and 
the  grazing  land  in  the  Channel  Islands  has 
often  been  described,  and  although  the  aggregate 
area  which  is  given  in  Jersey  to  green  crops, 
grasses  under  rotation,  and  permanent  pasture 
— both  for  hay  and  grazing — is  less  than  11,000 
acres,  they  keep  in  Jersey  over  12,300  head  of 
cattle  and  over  2,300  horses  solely  used  for 
agriculture  and  breeding. 

Moreover,  about  100  bulls  and  1,600  cows  and 
heifers  are  exported  every  year,*  so  that  by  this 
time,  as  was  remarked  in  an  American  paper, 
there  are  more  Jersey  cows  in  America  than 
in  Jersey  Island.  Jersey  milk  and  butter  have 

*  See  Appendix  L. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


171 


a  wide  renown,  as  also  the  pears  which  are 
grown  in  the  open  air,  but  each  of  which  is 
protected  on  the  tree  by  a  separate  cap,  and 
still  more  the  fruit  and  vegetables  which  are 
grown  in  the  hothouses.  In  a  word,  it  will 
suffice  to  say  that  on  the  whole  they  obtain 
agricultural  produce  to  the  value  of  £50  to 
each  acre  of  the  aggregate  surface  of  the  island. 

Fifty  pounds’  worth  of  agricultural  produce 
from  each  acre  of  the  land  is  sufficiently  good. 
But  the  more  we  study  the  modern  achieve¬ 
ments  of  agriculture,  the  more  we  see  that  the 
limits  of  productivity  of  the  soil  are  not  at¬ 
tained,  even  in  Jersey.  New  horizons  are  con¬ 
tinually  unveiled.  For  the  last  fifty  years 
science — especially  chemistry — and  mechanical 
skill  have  been  widening  and  extending  the 
industrial  powers  of  man  upon  organic  and 
inorganic  dead  matter.  Prodigies  have  been 
achieved  in  that  direction.  Now  comes  the 
turn  of  similar  achievements  with  living  plants. 
Human  skill  in  the  treatment  of  living  matter, 
and  science — in  its  branch  dealing  with  living 
organisms — step  in  with  the  intention  of  doing 
for  the  art,  of  food-growing  what  mechanical 
and  chemical  skill  have  done  in  the  art  of 
fashioning  and  shaping  metals,  wood  and  the 
dead  fibres  of  plants.  Almost  every  year  brings 


172 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


some  new,  often  unexpected  improvement  in 
the  art  of  agriculture,  which  for  so  many 
centuries  had  been  dormant. 

We  just  saw  that  while  the  average  potato 
crop  in  the  country  is  six  tons  per  acre,  in  Jersey 
it  is  nearly  twice  as  big.  But  Mr.  Knight, 
whose  name  is  well  known  to  every  horticulturist 
in  this  country,  has  once  dug  out  of  his  fields 
no  less  than  1,284  bushels  of  potatoes,  or 
thirty-four  tons  and  nine  cwts.  in  weight,  on 
one  single  acre  ;  and  at  a  recent  competition  in 
Minnesota  1,120  bushels,  or  thirty  tons,  could 
be  ascertained  as  having  been  grown  on  one  acre. 

These  are  undoubtedly  extraordinary  crops, 
but  quite  recently  the  French  Professor  Aime 
Girard  undertook  a  series  of  experiments  in 
order  to  find  out  the  best  conditions  for  grow¬ 
ing  potatoes  in  his  country.*  He  did  not  care 
for  show-crops  obtained  by  means  of  extrava¬ 
gant  manuring,  but  carefully  studied  all  con¬ 
ditions  :  the  best  variety,  the  depth  of  tilling 
and  planting,  the  distance  between  the  plants. 
Then  he  entered  into  correspondence  with  some 
350  growers  in  different  parts  of  France,  ad¬ 
vised  them  by  letters,  and  finally  induced  them 
to  experiment.  Strictly  following  his  instruc¬ 
tions,  several  of  his  correspondents  made  ex- 

*  See  the  Annales  agronomiques  for  1892  and  1893  ;  also 
Journal  des  Economistes,  fevrier,  1893,  p.  215. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


173 


periments  on  a  small  scale,  and  they  obtained 
— instead  of  the  three  tons  which  they  were 
accustomed  to  grow — such  crops  as  would 
correspond  to  twenty  and  thirty-six  tons  to  the 
acre.  Moreover,  ninety  growers  experimented 
on  fields  more  than  one-quarter  of  an  acre  in 
size,  and  more  than  twenty  growers  made  their 
experiments  on  larger  areas  of  from  three  to 
twenty-eight  acres.  The  result  was  that  none 
of  them  obtained  less  than  twelve  tons  to  the  acre, 
while  some  obtained  twenty  tons,  and  the 
average  was,  for  the  110  growers,  fourteen  and 
a  half  tons  per  acre. 

However,  industry  requires  still  heavier  crops. 
Potatoes  are  largely  used  in  Germany  and 
Belgium  for  distilleries  ;  consequently,  the  dis¬ 
tillery  owners  try  to  obtain  the  greatest  possible 
amounts  of  starch  from  the  acre.  Extensive 
experiments  have  lately  been  made  for  that 
purpose  in  Germany,  and  the  crops  were  :  Nine 
tons  per  acre  for  the  poor  sorts,  fourteen  tons 
for  the  better  ones,  and  thirty- two  and  four-tenths 
tons  for  the  best  varieties  of  potatoes. 

Three  tons  to  the  acre  and  more  than  thirty 
tons  to  the  acre  are  thus  the  ascertained  limits  ; 
and  one  necessarily  asks  "oneself  :  Which  of  the 
two  requires  less  labour  in  tilling,  planting,  culti¬ 
vating  and  digging,  and  less  expenditure  in 
manure — thirty  tons  grown  on  ten  acres,  or  the 


174 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


same  thirty  tons  grown  on  one  acre  or  two  ?  If 
labour  is  of  no  consideration,  while  every  penny 
spent  in  seeds  and  manure  is  of  great  importance, 
as  is  unhappily  very  often  the  case  with  the 
peasant — he  will  perforce  choose  the  first  method. 
But  is  it  the  most  economic  ? 

Again,  I  just  mentioned  that  in  the  Saffelare 
district  and  Jersey  they  succeed  in  keeping  one 
head  of  horned  cattle  to  each  acre  of  green  crops, 
meadows  and  pasture  land,  while  elsewhere  two 
or  three  acres  are  required  for  the  same  purpose. 
But  better  results  still  can  be  obtained  by  means 
of  irrigation,  either  with  sewage  or  even  with 
pure  water.  In  England,  farmers  are  contented 
with  one  and  a  half  and  two  tons  of  hay  per  acre, 
and  in  the  part  of  Flanders  just  mentioned, 
two  and  a  half  tons  of  hay  to  the  acre  are  con¬ 
sidered  a  fair  crop.  But  on  the  irrigated  fields  of 
the  Vosges,  the  Vaucluse,  etc.^  in  France,  six 
tons  of  dry  hay  become  the  rule,  even  upon  un¬ 
grateful  soil ;  and  this  means  considerably  more 
than  the  annual  food  of  one  milch  cow  (wdiich 
can  be  taken  at  a  little  less  than  five  tons) 
grown  on  each  acre.  All  taken,  the  results  of 
irrigation  have  proved  so  satisfactory  in  France 
that  during  the  years  1862-1882  no  less  than 
1,355,000  acres  of  meadows  have  been  irrigated,* 

*  Barral  in  Journal  d' Agriculture  'pratique,  2  fevrier,  1889 ; 
Boitel,  Herbages  et  Prairies  naturelles,  Paris,  1887. 


175 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 

which  means  that  the  annual  meat-food  of  at 
least  1,500,000  full-grown  persons,  or  more, 
has  been  added  to  the  yearly  income  of  the 
country  ;  home-grown,  not  imported.  In  fact, 
in  the  valley  of  the  Seine,  the  value  of  the  land 
was  doubled  by  irrigation  ;  in  the  Saone  valley 
it  was  increased  five  times,  and  ten  times  in  cer¬ 
tain  landes  of  Brittany. # 

The  example  of  the  Campine  district,  in  Bel¬ 
gium,  is  classical.  It  was  a  most  unproductive 
territory — mere  sand  from  the  sea,  blown  into 
irregular  mounds  which  were  only  kept  together 
by  the  roots  of  the  heath  ;  the  acre  of  it  used  to 
be  sold,  not  rented,  at  from  5s.  to  7s.  (15  to  20 
francs  per  hectare).  But  now  it  is  capable, 
thanks  to  the  work  of  the  Flemish  peasants 
and  to  irrigation,  to  produce  the  food  of  one 
milch  cow  per  acre — the  dung  of  the  cattle  being 
utilised  for  further  improvements. 

*  The  increase  of  the  crops  due  to  irrigation  is  most  in¬ 
structive.  In  the  most  unproductive  Sologne,  irrigation  has 
increased  the  hay  crop  from  two  tons  per  hectare  (two  and  a  half 
acres)  to  eight  tons  ;  in  the  Vendee,  from  four  tons  of  bad  hay 
to  ten  tons  of  excellent  hay.  In  the  Ain,  M.  Puris,  having  spent 
19,000  francs  for  irrigating  ninety- two  and  a  half  hectares 
(about  £2  10s.  per  acre),  obtained  an  increase  of  207  tons  of 
excellent  hay.  In  the  south  of  France,  a  net  increase  of  over 
four  bushels  of  wheat  per  acre  is  easily  obtained  by  irrigation  ; 
while  for  market  gardening  the  increase  was  found  to  attain 
£30  to  £40  per  acre.  (See  H.  Sagnier,  “  Irrigation,”  in  Barral’s 
Dictionnaire  d’ Agriculture,  vol.  iii.,  p.  339.J  I  hardly  need 
mention  the  striking  results  obtained  lately  by  irrigation  in 
Egypt  and  on  the  dry  plateaus  of  the  United  States. 


176 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


The  irrigated  meadows  round  Milan  are  another 
well-known  example.  Nearly  22,000  acres  are 
irrigated  there  with  water  derived  from  the  sewers 
of  the  city,  and  they  yield  crops  of  from  eight 
to  ten  tons  of  hay  as  a  rule  ;  occasionally  some 
separate  meadows  will  yield  the  fabulous  amount 
— fabulous  to-day,  but  no  longer  fabulous  to¬ 
morrow — of  eighteen  tons  of  hay  per  acre,  that 
is,  the  food  of  nearly  four  cows  to  the  acre, 
and  nine  times  the  yield  of  good  meadows  in  this 
country.*  However,  English  readers  need  not 
go  so  far  as  Milan  for  ascertaining  the  results 
of  irrigation  by  sewer  water.  They  have  several 
such  examples  in  this  country,  in  the  experiments 
of  Sir  John  Lawes,  and  especially  at  Craigentinny, 
near  Edinburgh,  where,  to  use  Honna’s  words, 
“  the  growth  of  rye  grass  is  so  activated  that  it 
attains  its  full  development  in  one  year  instead 
of  in  three  to  four  years.  Sown  in  August,  it 
gives  a  first  crop  in  autumn,  and  then,  beginning 
with  next  spring,  a  crop  of  four  tons  to  the  acre 
is  taken  every  month  ;  which  represents  in  the 
fourteen  months  more  than  fifty-six  tons  (of 
green  fodder)  to  the  acre.”  f  At  Lodge  Farm 
they  grow  forty  to  fifty-two  tons  of  green  crops 
per  acre,  after  the  cereals,  without  new  manur- 

\ 

*  Dictionnaire  d'  Agriculture,  same  article.  See  also  Appen¬ 
dix  M. 

t  Ronna,  Les  Irrigations,  vol.  iii.,  p.  67.  Paris,  1890. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


177 


ing.  At  Aldershot  they  obtain  excellent  potato 
crops  ;  and  at  Romford  (Breton’s  Farm)  Colonel 
Hope  obtained,  in  1871-1872,  quite  extravagant 
crops  of  various  roots  and  potatoes.* 

It  can  thus  be  said  that  while  at  the  present 
time  we  give  two  and  three  acres  for  keeping  one 
head  of  horned  cattle,  and  only  in  a  few  places 
one  head  of  cattle  is  kept  on  each  acre  given  to 
green  crops,  meadows  and  pasture,  man  has 
already  in  irrigation  (which  very  soon  repays 
when  it  is  properly  made)  the  possibility  of  keep¬ 
ing  twice  and  even  thrice  as  many  head  of  cattle 
to  the  acre  over  parts  of  his  territory.  Moreover, 
the  very  heavy  crops  of  roots  which  are  now 
obtained  (seventy-five  to  110  tons  of  beetroot  to 
the  acre  are  not  infrequent)  give  another  power¬ 
ful  means  for  increasing  the  number  of  cattle 
without  taking  the  land  from  what  is  now  given 
to  the  culture  of  cereals. 

Another  new  departure  in  agriculture,  which 
is  full  of  promises  and  probably  will  upset  many 
a  current  notion,  must  be  mentioned  in  this 
place.  I  mean  the  almost  horticultural  treat- 

*  Prof.  Ronna  gives  the  following  figures  of  crops  per  acre  : 
Twenty-eight  tons  of  potatoes,  sixteen  tons  of  mangolds,  105 
tons  of  beet,  110  tons  of  carrots,  nine  to  twenty  tons  of  various 
cabbage,  and  so  on. — Most  remarkable  results  seem  also  to  have 
been  obtained  by  M.  Goppart,  by  growing  green  fodder  for 
ensilage.  See  his  work,  Manuel  de  la  Culture  des  Mais  et  autres 
Fourrages  verts ,  Paris,  1877. 


178 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


ment  of  our  corn  crops,  which  is  widely  practised 
in  the  far  East,  and  begins  to  claim  our  attention 
in  Western  Europe  as  well. 

At  the  First  International  Exhibition,  in  1851, 
Major  Hallett,  of  Manor  House,  Brighton,  had  a 
series  of  very  interesting  exhibits  which  he  de¬ 
scribed  as  u  pedigree  cereals.”  By  picking  out 
the  best  plants  of  his  fields,  and  by  submitting 
their  descendants  to  a  careful  selection  from  year 
to  year,  he  had  succeeded  in  producing  new 
prolific  varieties  of  wheat  and  barley.  Each 
grain  of  these  cereals,  instead  of  giving  only  two 
to  four  ears,  as  is  the  usual  average  in  a  corn¬ 
field,  gave  ten  to  twenty-five  ears,  and  the  best 
ears,  instead  of  carrying  from  sixty  to  sixty- 
eight  grains,  had  an  average  of  nearly  twice  that 
number  of  grains. 

In  order  to  obtain  such  prolific  varieties  Major 
Hallett  naturally  could  not  sow  his  picked  grains 
broadcast  ;  he  planted  them,  each  separately, 
in  rows,  at  distances  of  from  ten  to  twelve  inches 
from  each  other.  In  this  way  he  found  that 
each  grain,  having  full  room  for  what  is  called 
“  tillering  ”  ( tallage  in  French  *),  would  produce 

*  “  Shortly  after  the  plant  appears  above  ground  it  com¬ 
mences  to  throw  out  new  and  distinct  stems,  upon  the  first 
appearance  of  which  a  correspondent  root-bud  is  developed  for 
its  support ;  and  while  the  new  stems  grow  out  flat  over  the 
surface  of  the  soil,  their  respective  roots  assume  a  corresponding 
development  beneath  it.  This  process,  called  ‘  tillering,’  will 
continue  until  the  season  arrives  for  the  stems  to  assume  an 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


179 


ten,  fifteen,  twenty-five,  and  even  up  to  ninety 
and  100  ears,  as  the  case  may  be  ;  and  as  each 
ear  would  contain  from  60  to  120  grains,  crops  of 
500  to  2,500  grains,  or  more,  could  b©  obtained 
from  each  separately  planted  grain.  He  even 
exhibited  at  the  Exeter  meeting  of  the  British 
Association  three  plants  of  wheat,  barley,  and 
oats,  each  from  a  single  grain,  which  had  the 
following  number  of  stems  :  wheat,  ninety-four 
stems  ;  barley,  110  stems  ;  oats,  eighty-seven 
stems.*  The  barley  plant  which  had  110  stems 
thus  gave  something  like  5,000  to  6,000  grains 
from  one  single  grain.  A  careful  drawing  of 
that  wonderful  stubble  was  made  by  Major 
Hallett’s  daughter  and  circulated  with  his 
pamphlets.f  Again,  in  1876,  a  wheat  plant,  with 
“105  heads  growing  on  one  root,  on  which  more 
than  8,000  grains  were  growing  at  once,”  was 
exhibited  at  the  Maidstone  Farmers’  Club.t 
Two  different  processes  were  thus  involved  in 

upright  growth.”  The  less  the  roots  have  been  interfered 
with  by  overcrowding  the  better  will  be  the  ears  (Major  Hallett, 
“  Thin  Seeding/’  etc.). 

*  Paper  on  “  Thin  Seeding  and  the  Selection  of  Seed,”  read 
before  the  Midland  Farmers’  Club,  4th  June,  1874. 

f  “  Pedigree  Cereals,”  1889.  Paper  on  “  Thin  Seeding,” 
etc.,  just  mentioned.  Abstracts  from  The  Times ,  etc.,  1862. 
Major  Hallett  contributed,  moreover,  several  papers  to  the 
Journal  of  the  Royal  Agricultural  Society,  and  one  to  The  Nine¬ 
teenth  Century. 

I  Agricultural  Gazette,  3rd  January,  1876.  Ninety  ears, 
some  of  which  contained  as  many  as  132  grains  each,  were  also 
obtained  in  New  Zealand. 


180 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


Hallett’s  experiments  :  a  process  of  selection,  in 
order  to  create  new  varieties  of  cereals,  similar 
to  the  breeding  of  new  varieties  of  cattle  ;  and 
a  method  of  immensely  increasing  the  crop  from 
each  grain  and  from  a  given  area,  by  planting 
each  seed  separately  and  wide  apart,  so  as  to 
have  room  for  the  full  development  of  the  young 
plant,  which  is  usually  suffocated  by  its  neigh¬ 
bours  in  our  corn-fields.* 

The  double  character  of  Major  Hallett’s 
method — the  breeding  of  new  'prolific  varieties, 
and  the  method  of  culture  by  planting  the  seeds 
wide  apart — seems,  however,  so  far  as  I  am  en¬ 
titled  to  judge,  to  have  been  overlooked  until 
quite  lately.  The  method  was  mostly  judged 
upon  its  results  ;  and  when  a  farmer  had  ex¬ 
perimented  upon  “  Hallett’s  Wheat,”  and  found 
out  that  it  was  late  in  ripening  in  his  own 
locality,  or  gave  a  less  perfect  grain  than  some 
other  variety,  he  usually  did  not  care  more  about 
the  method,  f  However,  Major  Hallett’s  suc- 

*  It  appears  from  many  different  experiments  (mentioned 
in  Prof.  Garola’s  excellent  work,  Les  C6r dales,  Paris,  1892)  that 
when  tested  seeds  (of  which  no  more  than  6  per  cent,  are  lost  on 
sowing)  are  sown  broadcast,  to  the  amount  of  500  seeds  per 
square  metre  (a  little  more  than  one  square  yard),  only  148  of 
them,  give  plants.  Each  plant  gives  in  such  case  from  two  to 
four  stems  and  from  two  to  four  ears  ;  but  nearly  360  seeds 
are  entirely  lost.  When  sown  in  rows,  the  loss  is  not  so  great, 
but  it  is  still  considerable. 

|  See  Prof.  Garola’s  remarks  on  “  Hallett’s  Wheat,”  which, 
by  the  way,  seems  to  be  well  known  to  farmers  in  France  and 
Germany  ( Les  C fatales,  p.  337 ^ 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


181 


cesses  or  non-successes  in  breeding  such  or  such 
varieties  are  quite  distinct  from  what  is  to  be 
said  about  the  method  itself  of  selection,  or  the 
method  of  planting  wheat  seeds  wide  apart. 
Varieties  which  were  bred,  and  which  I  saw 
grown  still  at  Manor  Farm,  on  the  windy  downs 
of  Brighton  may  be,  or  may  not  be,  suitable  to  this 
or  that  locality.  Latest  physiological  researches 
give  such  an  importance  to  evaporation  in  the 
bringing  of  cereals  to  maturity  that  where  evap¬ 
oration  is  not  so  rapid  as  it  is  on  the  Brighton 
Downs,  other  varieties  must  be  resorted  to  and 
bred  on  purpose.*  I  should  also  suggest  that 
quite  different  wheats  than  the  English  ought  to 
be  experimented  upon  for  obtaining  prolific  varie¬ 
ties  ;  namely,  the  quickly-growing  Norwegian 
wheat,  the  Jersey  “  three  months’  wheat,”  or 
even  Yakutsk  barley,  which  matures  with  an 
astonishing  rapidity.  And  now  that  horticul¬ 
turists,  so  experienced  in  “  breeding  ”  and 
“  crossing  ”  as  Vilmorin,  Carter,  Sherif,  W. 
Saunders  in  Canada  and  many  others  are,  have 
taken  the  matter  in  hand,  we  may  feel  sure  that 
future  progress  will  be  made.  But  breeding  is 
one  thing  ;  and  the  planting  wide  apart  of  seeds 

*  Besides,  Hallett’s  wheat  must  not  be  sown  later  than  the 
first  week  of  September.  Those  who  may  try  experiments  with 
planted  wheat  must  be  especially  careful  to  make  the  experi¬ 
ments  in  open  fields,  not  in  a  back  garden,  and  to  sow  early. 


182 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


of  an  appropriate  variety  of  wheat  is  quite 
another  thing. 

This  last  method  was  lately  experimented  upon 
by  M.  Grandeau,  Director  of  the  Station  Agro- 
nomique  de  1’Est,  and  by  M.  Elorimond  Dessprez 
at  the  experimental  station  of  Capelle  ;  and  in 
both  cases  the  results  were  most  remarkable. 
At  this  last  station  a  method  which  is  in  use  in 
France  for  the  choice  of  seeds  was  applied. 
Already  now  some  French  farmers  go  over  their 
wheat  fields  before  the  crop  begins,  choose  the 
soundest  plants  which  bear  two  or  three  equally 
strong  stems,  adorned  with  long  ears,  well 
stocked  with  grains,  and  take  these  ears.  Then 
they  crop  off  with  scissors  the  top  and  the  bottom 
of  each  ear  and  keep  its  middle  part  only,  which 
contains  the  biggest  seeds.  With  a  dozen  quarts 
of  such  selected  grains  they  obtain  next  year 
the  required  quantity  of  seeds  of  a  superior 
quality.* 

The  same  was  done  by  M.  Dessprez.  Then 
each  seed  was  planted  separately,  eight  inches 
apart  in  a  row,  by  means  of  a  specially  devised 
tool,  similar  to  the  rayonneur  which  is  used  for 
planting  potatoes  ;  and  the  rows,  also  eight 
inches  apart,  were  alternately  given  to  the  big 
and  to  the  smaller  seeds.  One-fourth  part  of 

*  Upon  this  method  of  selecting  seeds  opinions  are,  however, 
at  variance  amongst  agriculturists. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


183 


an  acre  having  been  planted  in  this  way,  with 
seeds  obtained  from  both  early  and  late  ears, 
crops  corresponding  to  83  *8  bushels  per  acre 
for  the  first  series,  and  90' 4  bushels  for  the 
second  series,  were  obtained ;  even  the  small 
grains  gave  in  this  experiment  as  much  as  70*2 
and  62  bushels  respectively.* 

The  crop  was  thus  more  than  doubled  by  the 
choice  of  seeds  and  by  planting  them  separately 
eight  inches  apart.  It  corresponded  in  Dessprez’s 
experiments  to  600  grains  obtained  on  the  average 
from  each  grain  sown  ;  and  one-tenth  or  one- 
eleventh  part  of  an  acre  was  sufficient  in  such 
case  to  grow  the  eight  and  a  half  bushels  of  wheat 
which  are  required  on  the  average  for  the  annual 
bread  food  per  head  of  a  population  which  would 
chiefly  live  on  bread. 

Prof.  Grandeau,  Director  of  the  French  Station 
Agronomique  de  TEst,  has  also  made,  since  1886, 
experiments  on  Major  Hallett’s  method,  and  he 
obtained  similar  results.  “  In  a  proper  soil,”  he 
wrote,  “  one  single  grain  of  wheat  can  give  as 
much  as  fifty  stems  (and  ears),  and  even  more, 
and  thus  cover  a  circle  thirteen  inches  in  dia- 


*  The  straw  was  eighty-three  and  seventy-seven  cwts.  per 
acre  in  the  first  case  ;  fifty-nine  and  forty-nine  cwts.  in  the 
second  case  (Garola,  Les  C6r6ales).  In  his  above-mentioned 
paper  on  “  Thin  Seeding,”  Major  Hallett  mentions  a  crop  at  the 
rate  of  108  bushels  to  the  acre,  obtained  by  planting  nine  inches 
apart. 


184  THE  POSSIBILITIES 

meter.”  *  But  as  he  seems  to  know  how  difficult 
it  often  is  to  convince  people  of  the  plainest 
facts,  he  published  the  photographs  of  separate 
wheat  plants  grown  in  different  soils,  differently 
manured,  including  pure  river  sand  enriched  by 
manure,  f  He  concluded  that  under  proper 
treatment  2,000  and  even  4,000  grains  could  be 
easily  obtained  from  each  planted  grain.  The 
seedlings,  growing  from  grains  planted  ten  inches 
apart,  cover  the  whole  space,  and  the  experi¬ 
mental  plot  takes  the  aspect  of  an  excel¬ 
lent  cornfield,  as  may  be  seen  from  a  photo¬ 
graph  given  by  Grandeau  in  his  Etudes 
agronomiques .% 

In  fact,  the  eight  and  a  half  bushels  required 
for  one  man’s  annual  food  were  actually  grown 
at  the  Tomblaine  station  on  a  surface  of  2,250 


*  L.  Grandeau,  Etudes  agronomiques,  3e  serie,  1887-1888,  p. 
43.  This  series  is  still  continued  by  one  volume  every  year. 

|  On  one  of  these  photographs  one  sees  that  in  a  soil  im¬ 
proved  by  chemical  manure  only,  seventeen  stems  from  each 
grain  are  obtained  ;  with  organic  manure  added  to  the  former, 
twenty-five  stems  were  obtained. 

J  Most  interesting  experiments  for  obtaining  new  sorts  of 
wheat,  combining  the  qualities  of  Canadian  wheat  with  those  of 
the  best  British  sorts,  are  being  carried  on  now  at  the  Cambridge 
University.  Similar  experiments  have  been  made  in  Germany 
by  F.  von  Lochow,  at  Petkno,  in  order  to  produce  new  races  of  rye 
rich  in  gluten  and  prolific.  These  last  experiments  were  made 
on  Mr.  Hallett’s  method,  and  the  results  were  satisfactory,  as 
it  appears  from  a  report  published  in  Fuehling’s  Landwirthschaft- 
liche  Zeitung,  Leipzig,  January  and  February,  1900,  pp.  29  and 
45. 


Fig.  5.— Squares  at  Professor  Grandeau’s  experimental  station,  planted  with  grains  of  wheat, 
in  three  different  soils  :  a,  pure  sand  ;  b  and  c,  manured  arable  soil ; 
each  grain  12  inches  apart. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


185 


square  feet,  or  forty-seven  feet  square  —  that 
is,  on  very  nearly  one-twentieth  part  of  an 
acre. 

Again,  we  may  thus  say,  that  where  we  require 
now  three  acres,  one  acre  would  be  sufficient  for 
growing  the  same  amount  of  food,  if  planting 
wide  apart  were  resorted  to.  -And  there  is, 
surely,  no  more  objection  to  planting  wheat  than 
there  is  to  sowing  in  rows,  which  is  now  in  general 
use,  although  at  the  time  when  the  system  was 
first  introduced,  in  lieu  of  the  formerly  usual 
mode  of  sowing  broadcast,  it  certainly  was  met 
with  great  distrust.  While  the  Chinese  and  the 
Japanese  used  for  centuries  to  sow  wheat  in 
rows,  by  means  of  a  bamboo  tube  adapted  to  the 
plough,  European  writers  objected,  of  course,  to 
this  method  under  the  pretext  that  it  would  re¬ 
quire  too  much  labour.  It  is  the  same  now  with 
planting  each  seed  apart.  Professional  writers 
sneer  at  it,  although  all  the  rice  that  is  grown  in 
Japan  is  planted  and  even  replanted.  Everyone, 
however,  who  will  think  of  the  labour  which 
must  be  spent  for  ploughing,  harrowing,  fencing, 
and  keeping  free  of  weeds  three  acres  instead  of 
one,  and  who  will  calculate  the  corresponding 
expenditure  in  manure,  will  surely  admit  that 
all  advantages  are  in  favour  of  the  one  acre  as 
against  the  three  acres,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
possibilities  of  irrigation,  or  of  the  planting 


186  THE  POSSIBILITIES 

machine-tool,  which  will  be  devised  as  soon  as 
there  is  a  demand  for  it.* 

More  than  that,  there  is  full  reason  to  believe 
that  even  this  method  is  liable  to  further  im¬ 
provement  by  means  of  replanting .  Cereals  in 
such  cases  would  be  treated  as  vegetables  are 
treated  in  horticulture.  Such  is,  at  least,  the 
idea  which  began  to  germinate  since  the  methods 
of  cereal  culture  that  are  resorted  to  in  China 
and  Japan  became  better  known  in  Europe. 
(See  Appendix  0.) 

The  future — a  near  future,  I  hope — will  show 
what  practical  importance  such  a  method  of 
treating  cereals  may  have.  But  we  need  not 
speculate  about  that  future.  We  have  already, 
in  the  facts  mentioned  in  this  chapter,  an  ex¬ 
perimental  basis  for  quite  a  number  of  means  of 
improving  our  present  methods  of  culture  and  of 
largely  increasing  the  crops.  It  is  evident  that  in 
a  book  which  is  not  intended  to  be  a  manual  of 
agriculture,  all  I  can  do  is  to  give  only  a  few  hints 
to  set  people  thinking  for  themselves  upon  this 
subject.  But  the  little  that  has  been  said  is 
sufficient  to  show  that  we  have  no  right  to  com¬ 
plain  of  over-population,  and  no  need  to  fear  it 
in  the  future.  Our  means  of  obtaining  from  the 
soil  whatever  we  want,  under  any  climate  and 
upon  any  soil,  have  lately  been  improved  at  such 

*  See  Appendix  N. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


187 


a.  rate  that  we  cannot  foresee  yet  what  is  the 
limit  of  productivity  of  a  few  acres  of  land. 
The  limit  vanishes  in  proportion  to  our  better 
study  of  the  subject,  and  every  year  makes  it 
vanish  further  and  further  from  our  sight. 


CHAPTER  V. 


the  possibilities  of  agriculture — ( continued ). 

Extension  of  market-gardening  and  fruit  growing :  in  France  ; 
in  the  United  States — Culture  under  glass — Kitchen  gar¬ 
dens  under  glass — Hothouse  culture :  in  Guernsey  and 
Jersey  ;  in  Belgium — Conclusion. 


NE  of  the  most  interesting  features  of  the 


V_>/  present  evolution  of  agriculture  is  the  ex¬ 
tension  lately  taken  by  intensive  market-garden¬ 
ing  of  the  same  sort  as  has  been  described  in  the 
third  chapter.  What  formerly  was  limited  to  a 
few  hundreds  of  small  gardens,  is  now  spreading 
with  an  astonishing  rapidity.  In  this  country 
the  area  given  to  market-gardens,  after  having 
more  than  doubled  within  the  years  1879  to  1894, 
when  it  attained  88,210  acres,  has  continued 
steadily  to  increase.*  But  it  is  especially  in 
France,  Belgium,  and  America  that  this  branch 
of  culture  has  lately  taken  a  great  development. 
(See  Appendix  P.) 

*  Charles  Whitehead,  Hints  on  Vegetable  and  Fruit  Farming , 
London  (J.  Murray),  1890.  The  Gardener's  Chronicle ,  20th 
April,  1895. 


POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE.  189 


At  the  present  time  no  less  than  1,075,000  acres 
are  given  in  France  to  market-gardening  and 
intensive  fruit  culture,  and  a  few  years  ago  it 
was  estimated  that  the  average  yield  of  every 
acre  given  to  these  cultures  attains  £33,  10s.* 
Their  character,  as  well  as  the  amount  of  skill 
displayed  in,  and  labour  given  to,  these  cultures, 
will  best  appear  from  the  following  illustrations. 

About  Roscoff,  which  is  a  great  centre  in 
Brittany  for  the  export  to  England  of  such  pota¬ 
toes  as  will  keep  till  late  in  summer,  and  of  all 
sorts  of  vegetables,  a  territory,  twenty-six  miles 
in  diameter,  is  entirely  given  to  these  cultures, 
and  the  rents  attain  and  exceed  £5  per  acre. 
Nearly  300  steamers  call  at  Roscoff  to  ship 
potatoes,  onions  and  other  vegetables  to  London 
and  different  English  ports,  as  far  north  as  New¬ 
castle.  Moreover,  as  much  as  4,000  tons  of 
vegetables  are  sent  every  year  to  Paris.*)*  And 
although  the  Roscoff  peninsula  enjoys  a  specially 
warm  climate,  small  stone  walls  are  erected  every¬ 
where,  and  rushes  are  grown  on  their  tops  in 
order  to  give  still  more  protection  and  heat  to 
the  vegetables. J  The  climate  is  improved  as 
well  as  the  soil. 

*  Charles  Baltet,  U  Horticulture  darts  les  cinq  Parties  du 
Monde.  Ouvrage  couronn6  par  la  Soci6tt  Rationale  d'  Horticulture. 
Paris  (Hachette),  1895. 

f  Charles  Baltet,  loc.  cit. 

X  Ardouin  Dumazet,  Voyage  en  France ,  vol.  v.,  p.  10. 


190 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


In  the  neighbourhoods  of  Cherbourg  it  is 
upon  land  conquered  from  the  sea  that  the  best 
vegetables  are  grown — more  than  800  acres  of  that 
land  being  given  to  potatoes  exported  to  London  ; 
another  500  acres  are  given  to  cauliflower  ;  125 
acres  to  Brussels  sprouts  ;  and  so  on.  Potatoes 
grown  under  glass  are  also  sent  to  the  London 
market  from  the  middle  of  April,  and  the  total 
export  of  vegetables  from  Cherbourg  to  England 
attains  300,000  cwts.,  while  from  the  small  port 
of  Barfleur  another  100,000  cwts.  are  sent  to  this 
country,  and  about  60,000  cwts.  to  Paris.  Nay, 
in  a  quite  small  commune,  Surtainville,  near  Cher¬ 
bourg,  £2,800  are  made  out  of  180  acres  of  market- 
gardens,  three  crops  being  taken  every  year  : 
cabbage  in  February,  early  potatoes  next,  and 
various  crops  in  the  autumn — to  say  nothing  of 
the  catch  crops. 

At  Ploustagel  one  hardly  believes  that  he  is 
in  Brittany.  Melons  used  to  be  grown  at  that 
spot,  long  since,  in  the  open  fields,  with  glass 
frames  to  protect  them  from  the  spring  frost, 
and  green  peas  were  grown  under  the  protection 
of  rows  of  furze  which  sheltered  them  from  the 
northern  winds.  Now,  whole  fields  are  covered 
with  strawberries,  roses,  violets,  cherries  and 
plums,  down  to  the  very  sea  beach.*  Even  the 
landes  are  reclaimed,  and  we  are  told  that  in  five 
*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  Voyage  en  France ,  vol.  v.,  p.  200. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


191 


years  or  so  there  will  be  no  more  landes  in  that 
district  (p.  265).  Nay,  the  marshes  of  the  Dol — 
“  The  Holland  of  Brittany  ” — protected  from  the 
sea  by  a  wall  (5,050  acres),  have  been  turned 
into  market-gardens,  covered  with  ca/uliflowers, 
onions,  radishes,  haricot  beans  and  so  on,  the 
acre  of  that  land  being  rented  at  from  £2,  10s. 
to  £4. 

The  neighbourhoods  of  Nantes  could  also  be 
mentioned.  Green  peas  are  cultivated  there  on 
a  very  large  scale.  During  the  months  of  May 
and  June  quite  an  army  of  working  people, 
especially  women  and  children,  are  picking 
them.  The  roads  leading  to  the  great  preserving 
factories  are  covered  at  certain  hours  with  rows 
of  carts,  upon  which  the  peas  and  onions  are 
carted  one  way,  while  another  row  of  carts  are 
carrying  the  empty  pods  which  are  used  for 
manure.  For  two  months  the  children  are 
missing  in  the  schools ;  and  in  the  peasant 
families  of  the  neighbourhood,  when  the  question 
comes  about  some  expenditure  to  be  made,  the 
usual  saying  is,  “  Wait  till  the  season  of  the 
green  peas  has  come.” 

About  Paris  no  less  than  50,000  acres  are  given 
to  the  field  culture  of  vegetables  and  25,000  acres 
to  the  forced  culture  of  the  same.  Sixty  years 
ago  the  yearly  rent  paid  by  market-gardeners 
attained  already  as  much  as  £18  and  £24  per 


192 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


acre,  and  yet  it  has  been  increased  since,  as  well 
as  the  gross  receipts,  which  were  valued  by 
Courtois  Gerard  at  £240  per  acre  for  the  larger 
market-gardeners,  and  twice  as  much  for  the 
smaller  ones  in  which  early  vegetables  are  grown 
in  frames. 

The  fruit  culture  in  the  neighbourhoods  of 
Paris  is  equally  wonderful.  At  Montreuil,  for 
instance,  750  acres,  belonging  to  400  gar¬ 
deners,  are  literally  covered  with  stone  walls, 
specially  erected  for  growing  fruit,  and  having 
an  aggregate  length  of  400  miles.  Upon  these 
walls,  peach  trees,  pear  trees  and  vines  are 
spread,  and  every  year  something  like  12,000,000 
peaches  are  gathered,  as  well  as  a  considerable 
amount  of  the  finest  pears  and  grapes.  The 
acre  in  such  conditions  brings  in  £56.  This  is 
how  a  44  warmer  climate  ”  was  made,  at  a 
time  when  the  greenhouse  was  still  a  costly 
luxury.  All  taken,  1,250  acres  are  given  to 
peaches  (25,000,000  peaches  every  year)  in  the 
close  neighbourhood  of  Paris.  Acres  and  acres 
are  also  covered  with  pear  trees  which  yield 
three  to  five  tons  of  fruit  per  acre,  such  crop 
being  sold  at  from  £50  to  £60.  Nay,  at  Angers, 
on  the  Loire,  where  pears  are  eight  days  in 
advance  of  the  suburbs  of  Paris,  Baltet  knows 
an  orchard  of  five  acres,  covered  with  pears 
(pyramid  trees),  which  brings  in  £400  every 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


193- 


year  ;  and  at  a  distance  of  thirty-three  miles 
from  Paris  one  pear  plantation  brings  in  £24 
per  acre — the  cost  of  package,  transport  and 
selling  being  deducted.  Likewise,  the  planta¬ 
tions  of  plums,  of  which  80,000  cwts.  are  con¬ 
sumed  every  year  at  Paris  alone,  give  an  annual 
money  income  of  from  £29  to  £48  per  acre  every 
year ;  and  yet,  pears,  plums  and  cherries  are 
sold  at  Paris,  fresh  and  juicy,  at  such  a  price 
that  the  poor,  too,  can  eat  fresh  home-grown 
fruit. 

In  the  province  of  Anjou  one  may  see  how 
a  heavy  clay,  improved  with  sand  taken  from 
the  Loire  and  with  manure,  has  been  turned, 
in  the  neighbourhoods  of  Angers,  and  especially 
at  Saint  Laud,  into  a  soil  which  is  rented  at 
from  £2,  10s.  to  £5  the  acre,  and  upon  that 
soil  fruit  is  grown  which  a  few  years  ago  was 
exported  to  America-.*  At  Bennecour,  a  quite 
small  village  of  850  inhabitants,  near  Paris, 
one  sees  what  man  can  make  out  of  the  most 
unproductive  soil.  Quite  recently  the  steep 
slopes  of  its  hills  were  only  mergers  from  which 
stone  was  extracted  for  the  pavements  of  Paris. 
Now  these  slopes  are  entirely  covered  with 
apricot  and  cherry  trees,  black-currant  shrubs, 
and  plantations  of  asparagus,  green  peas  and 

*  "Raudrillart,  Les  Populations  agricoles  de  la  France  :  Anjou , 

pp.  70,  71. 


7 


194 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


the  like.  In  1881,  £5,600  worth  of  apricots 
alone  was  sold  out  of  this  village,  and  it  must 
be  borne  in  mind  that  competition  is  so  acute 
in  the  neighbourhoods  of  Paris  that  a  delay  of 
twenty-four  hours  in  the  sending  of  apricots 
to  the  market  will  often  mean  a  loss  of  8s. — 
one-seventh  of  the  sale  price  on  each  hundred¬ 
weight.* 

At  Perpignan,  green  artichokes — a  favourite 
vegetable  in  France — are  grown,  from  October 
till  June,  on  an  area  covering  2,500  acres,  and 
the  net  revenue  is  estimated  at  £32  per  acre. 
In  Central  France,  artichokes  are  even  cultivated 
in  the  open  fields,  and  nevertheless  the  crops 
are  valued  (by  Baltet)  at  from  £48  to  £100  per 
acre.  In  the  Loiret,  1,500  gardeners,  who 
occasionally  employ  5,000  workmen,  obtain 
from  £400,000  to  £480,000  worth  of  vegetables, 
and  their  yearly  expenditure  for  manure  is 
£60,000.  This  figure  alone  is  the  best  answer 
to  those  who  are  fond  of  talking  about  the 
extraordinary  fertility  of  the  soil,  each  time  they 
are  told  of  some  success  in  agriculture.  At 
Lyons,  a  population  of  430,000  inhabitants  is 
entirely  supplied  with  vegetables  by  the  local 

*  The  total  production  of  dessert  fruit  as  well  as  dried  or 
preserved  fruit  in  Fi  ance  was  estimated,  in  1876,  at  84,000  tons, 
and  its  value  was  taken  at  about  3,000,000,000  fr.  (£120,000,000) 
— more  than  one-half  of  the  war  contribution  levied  by  Germany. 
It  must  have  largely  increased  since  1876. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


195 


gardeners.  The  same  is  in  Amiens,  which  is 
another  big  industrial  city.  The  districts  sur¬ 
rounding  Orleans  form  another  great  centre  for 
market-gardening,  and  it  is  especially  worthy 
of  notice  that  the  shrubberies  of  Orleans  supply 
even  America  with  large  quantities  of  young 
trees.* 

It  would  take,  however,  a  volume  to  describe 
the  chief  centres  of  market-gardening  and 
fruit-growing  in  France  ;  and  I  will  mention  only 
one  region  more,  where  vegetables  and  fruit¬ 
growing  go  hand  in  hand.  It  lies  on  the  banks 
of  the  Rhone,  about  Vienne,  where  we  find  a 
narrow  strip  of  land,  partly  composed  of  granite 
rocks,  which  has  now  become  a  garden  of  an 
incredible  richness.  The  origin  of  that  wealth, 
we  are  told  by  Ardouin  Dumazet,  dates  from 
some  thirty  years  ago,  when  the  vineyards, 
ravaged  by  phylloxera,  had  to  be  destroyed 
and  some  new  culture  had  to  be  found.  The 
village  of  Ampuis  became  then  renowned  for 
its  apricots.  At  the  present  time,  for  a  full 
100  miles  along  the  Rhone,  and  in  the  lateral 
valleys  of  the  Ardeche  and  the  Drome,  the 
country  is  an  admirable  orchard,  from  which 
millions’  worth  of  fruit  is  exported,  and  the 
land  attains  the  selling  price  of  from  £325  to 
£400  the  acre.  Small  plots  of  land  are  con- 

*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  i.,  204. 


196 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


tinually  reclaimed  for  culture  upon  every 
crag.  On  both  sides  of  the  roads  one  sees  the 
plantations  of  apricot  and  cherry  trees,  while 
between  the  rows  of  trees  early  beans  and  peas, 
strawberries,  and  all  sorts  of  early  vegetables 
are  grown.  In  the  spring  the  fine  perfume  of 
the  apricot  trees  in  bloom  floats  over  the  whole 
valley.  Strawberries,  cherries,  apricots,  peaches 
and  grapes  follow  each  other  in  rapid  succession, 
and  at  the  same  time  cartloads  of  French  beans, 
salads,  cabbages,  leeks,  and  potatoes  are  sent 
towards  the  industrial  cities  of  the  region.  It 
would  be  impossible  to  estimate  the  quantity 
and  value  of  all  that  is  grown  in  that  region. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  a  tiny  commune,  Saint 
Desirat,  exported  during  Ardouin  Dumazet’s 
visit  about  2,000  cwts.  of  cherries  every  day.* 

The  results  of  this  development  are  simply 
striking.  Thus  it  appears,  from  an  inquest 
made  in  •  1906  by  the  French  professors  of 
agriculture,  that  the  yearly  export  of  fresh 
flowers  from  the  depcirtement  of  the  Alpes  Mari- 
times  attains  as  much  as  £400,000,  and  that 
of  the  flowers  used  for  perfumes  gives  from 
£280,000  to  £320,000  in  addition  to  the  just 
mentioned  sum.f  From  the  depcirtement  of  the 

*  Ardouin  Duinazet,  vol.  vii.,  pp.  124,  125. 

f  M.  Auge-Laribe,  L'  evolution  de  la  France  agricole,  Paris 


OF  AGRICULTURE.  197 

Var,  3,475  tons  of  flowers,  valued  from  £160,000 
to  £200,000,  were  exported  in  1902. 

I  must  refer  the  reader  to  the  work  of  Charles 
Baltet  if  he  will  know  more  about  the  ex¬ 
tension  taken  by  market-gardening  in  different 
countries,  and  will  only  mention  Belgium  and 
America. 

The  exports  of  vegetables  from  Belgium  have 
increased  twofold  within  the  last  twenty  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  whole  regions, 
like  Flanders,  claim  to  be  now’  the  market- 
garden  of  England,  even  seeds  of  the  vege¬ 
tables  preferred  in  this  country  being  dis¬ 
tributed  free  by  one  horticultural  society  in 
order  to  increase  the  export.  Not  only  the  best 
lands  are  appropriated  for  that  purpose,  but 
even  the  sand  deserts  of  the  Ardennes  and  peat¬ 
bogs  are  turned  into  rich  market-gardens,  while 
large  plains  (namely  at  Haeren)  are  irrigated 
for  the  same  purpose.  Scores  of  schools,  ex¬ 
perimental  farms,  and  small  experimental 
stations,  evening  lectures,  and  so  on,  are 
opened  by  the  communes,  the  private  societies, 
and  the  State,  in  order  to  promote  horticulture, 

(Armand  Colin),  1912,  p.  74.  Professor  Fontgalland  estimates 
that  the  total  exports  of  flowers,  living  plants,  fruit  and  vege¬ 
tables,  both  in  season  and  out  of  season  ( primeurs ),  from  the 
Alpes  Maritimes,  reach  the  enormous  sum  of  £1,188,000,  the 
gross  income  from  an  acre  reaching  as  much  as  £200. 


198  THE  POSSIBILITIES 

and  hundreds  of  acres  of  land  are  covered  with 
thousands  of  greenhouses. 

Here  we  see  one  small  commune  exporting 
5,500  tons  of  potatoes  and  £4,000  worth  of  pears 
to  Stratford  and  Scotland,  and  keeping  for  that 
purpose  its  own  line  of  steamers.  Another 
commune  supplies  the  north  of  France  and  the 
Rhenish  provinces  with  strawberries,  and  occa¬ 
sionally  sends  some  of  them  to  Covent  Garden 
as  well.  Elsewhere  early  carrots,  which  are 
grown  amidst  flax,  barley  and  white  poppies, 
give  a  considerable  addition  to  the  farmer’s 
income.  In  another  place  we  learn  that  land 
is  rented  at  £24  and  £27  the  acre,  not  for 
grapes  or  melon-growing  but  for  the  modest 
culture  of  onions  ;  or  that  the  gardeners  have 

done  awav  with  such  a  nuisance  as  natural  soil  in 
«/ 

their  frames,  and  prefer  to  make  their  loam  out 
of  wood  sawings,  tannery  refuse  and  hemp  dust, 
“  animalised  ”  by  various  composts.* 

In  short,  Belgium,  which  is  one  of  the  chief 
manufacturing  countries  of  Europe,  is  now 
becoming  one  of  the  chief  centres  of  horticulture. 
(See  Appendix  B.) 

a 

The  other  country  which  must  especially  be 
recommended  to  the  attention  of  horticulturists 
is  America.  When  we  see  the  mountains  of 

9 

*  Charles  Baltet,  L'  Horticulture,  etc. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


199 


fruit  imported  from  America  we  are  inclined  to 
think  that  fruit  in  that  country  grows  by  itself. 
“Beautiful climate,”  “virgin soil,”  “immeasurable 
spaces  ” — these  words  continually  recur  in  the 
papers.  The  reality,  however,  is  that  horticul¬ 
ture — that  is,  both  market-gardening  and  fruit 
culture — has  been  brought  in  America  to  a  high 
degree  of  perfection.  Prof.  Baltet,  a  practical 
gardener  himself,  originally  from  the  classical 
marais  (market-gardens)  of  Troyes,  describes 
the  “  truck  farms  ”  of  Norfolk  in  Virginia  as 
real  “  model  farms.”  A  highly  complimentary 
appreciation  from  the  lips  of  a  practical  marai- 
cher  who  has  learned  from  his  infancy  that  only 
in  fairyland  do  the  golden  apples  grow  by  the 
fairies’  magic  wand.  As  to  the  perfection  to 
which  apple-growing  has  been  brought  in  Canada, 
the  aid  which  the  apple-growers  receive  from 
the  Canadian  experimental  farms,  and  the 
means  which  are  resorted  to,  on  a  truly  American 
scale,  to  spread  information  amongst  the  farmers 
and  to  supply  them  with  new  varieties  of  fruit 
trees — all  this  ought  to  be  carefully  studied  in 
this  country,  instead  of  inducing  Englishmen 
to  believe  that  the  American  supremacy  is  due 
to  the  golden  fairies’  hands.  If  one  tenth  part  of 
what  is  done  in  the  States  and  in  Canada  for 
favouring  agriculture  and  horticulture  were 
done  in  this  country,  English  fruit  would  not 


200 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


have  been  so  shamefully  driven  out  of  the 
market  as  it  was  a  few  years  ago. 

The  extension  given  to  horticulture  in  America 

is  immense.  The  “  truck  farms  ”  alone — that 

* 

is,  the  farms  which  work  for  export  by  rail  or 
steam — covered  in  the  States  in  1892  no  less 
than  400,000  acres.  At  the  very  doors  of 
Chicago  one  single  market-gardening  farm 
covers  500  acres,  and  out  of  these,  150  acres 
are  given  to  cucumbers,  50  acres  to  early  peas, 
and  so  on.  During  the  Chicago  Exhibition  a 
special  “  strawberry  express,”  composed  of 
thirty  waggons,  brought  in  every  day  324,000 
quarts  of  the  freshly  gathered  fruit,  and  there 
are  days  that  over  10,000  bushels  of  straw¬ 
berries  are  imported  in  New  York — three-fourths 
of  that  amount  coming  from  the  “  truck  farms  ” 
of  Virginia  by  steamer.* 

This  is  what  can  be  achieved  by  an  intelligent 
combination  of  agriculture  with  industry,  and 
undoubtedly  will  be  applied  on  a  still  larger 
scale  in  the  future. 

However,  a  further  advance  is  being  made  in 
order  to  emancipate  horticulture  from  climate. 
I  mean  the  glasshouse  culture  of  fruit  and 
vegetables. 

Formerly  the  greenhouse  was  the  luxury  of 
*  Charles  Baltet,  L'  Horticulture,  etc. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


201 


the  rich  mansion.  It  was  kept  at  a  high  tem¬ 
perature,  and  was  made  use  of  for  growing, 
under  cold  skies,  the  golden  fruit  and  the  be¬ 
witching  flowers  of  the  South.  Now,  and 
especially  since  the  progress  of  technics  allows 
of  making  cheap  glass  and  of  having  all  the 
woodwork,  sashes  and  bars  of  a  greenhouse 
made  by  machinery,  the  glasshouse  becomes 
appropriated  for  growing  fruit  for  the  million, 
as  well  as  for  the  culture  of  common  vegetables. 
The  aristocratic  hothouse,  stocked  with  the 
rarest  fruit  trees  and  flowers,  remains ;  nay, 
it  spreads  more  and  more  for  growing  luxuries 
which  become  more  and  more  accessible  to 
the  great  number.  But  by  its  side  we 
have  the  plebeian  greenhouse,  which  is  heated 
for  only  a  couple  of  months  in  winter  and  the 
still  more  economically  built  “  cool  green¬ 
house,”  which  is  a  simple  glass  shelter — a  big 
“  cool  frame  ” — and  is  stuffed  with  the  humble 
vegetables  of  the  kitchen  garden  :  the  potatoes, 
the  carrots,  the  French  beans,  the  peas  and  the 
like.  The  heat  of  the  sun,  passing  through  the 
glass,  but  prevented  by  the  same  glass  from 
escaping  by  radiation,  is  sufficient  to  keep  it 
at  a  very  high  temperature  during  spring  and 
early  summer.  A  new  system  of  horticulture — 
the  market-garden  under  glass — is  thus  rapidly 
gaining  ground. 


202 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


The  greenhouse  for  commercial  purposes  is 
essentially  of  British,  or  perhaps  Scottish, 
origin.  Already  in  1851,  Mr.  Th.  Rivers  had 
published  a  book,  The  Orchard  Houses  and  the 
Cultivation  of  Fruit  Trees  in  Pots  under  Glass  ; 
and  we  were  told  by  Mr.  D.  Thomson,  in  the 
Journal  of  Horticulture  (31st  January,  1889), 
that  nearly  fifty  years  ago  grapes  in  February 
were  sold  at  25s.  the  pound  by  a  grower  in  the 
north  of  England,  and  that  part  of  them  was 
sent  by  the  buyer  to  Paris  for  Napoleon  III.’s 
table,  at  50s.  the  pound.  “  Now,”  Mr.  Thom¬ 
son  added,  “  they  are  sold  at  the  tenth  or  twen¬ 
tieth  part  of  the  above  prices.  Cheap  coal — 
cheap  grapes  ;  that  is  the  whole  secret.” 

Large  vineries  and  immense  establishments 
for  growing  flowers  under  glass  are  of  an  old 
standing  in  this  country,  and  new  ones  are 
continually  built  on  a  grand  scale.  Entire 
fields  are  covered  with  glass  at  Cheshunt,  at 
Broxburn  (fifty  acres),  at  Finchley,  at  Bexley, 
at  Swanley,  at  Whetstone,  and  so  on,  to  say 
nothing  of  Scotland.  Worthing  is  also  a  well- 
known  centre  for  growing  grapes  and  tomatoes  ; 
while  the  greenhouses  given  to  flowers  and 
ferns  at  Upper  Edmonton,  at  Chelsea,  at 
Orpington,  and  so  on,  have  a  world-wide  reputa¬ 
tion.  And  the  tendency  is,  on  the  one  side,  to 
bring  grape  culture  to  the  highest  degree  of 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


203 


perfection,  and,  on  the  other  side,  to  cover 
acres  and  acres  with  glass  for  growing  tomatoes, 
French  beans  and  peas,  which  undoubtedly 
will  soon  be  followed  by  the  culture  of  still 
plainer  vegetables.  This  movement,  as  will  be 
seen  further  on,  has  been  steadily  continuing 
for  the  last  twenty  years. 

However,  the  Channel  Islands  and  Belgium 
still  hold  the  lead  in  the  development  of  glass¬ 
house  culture.  The  glory  of  Jersey  is,  of 
course,  Mr.  Bashford’s  establishment.  When 
I  visited  it  in  1890,  it  contained  490,000  square 
feet  under  glass — that  is,  nearly  thirteen  acres 
— but  seven  more  acres  under  glass  have  been 
added  to  it  since.  A  long  row  of  glasshouses, 
interspersed  with  high  chimneys,  covers  the 
ground — the  largest  of  the  houses  being  900  feet 
long  and  forty-six  feet  wide ;  this  means  that 
about  one  acre  of  land,  in  one  piece,  is  under 
glass.  The  whole  is  built  most  substantially  : 
granite  walls,  great  height,  thick  “  twenty- 
seven  oz.  glass  ”  (of  the  thickness  of  three 
pennies),*  ventilators  which  open  upon  a  length 
of  200  and  300  feet  by  working  one  single  handle  ; 
and  so  on.  And  yet  the  most  luxurious  of  these 
greenhouses  was  said  by  the  owners  to  have 
cost  less  than  Is.  the  square  foot  of  glass  (13d. 

*  “  Twenty-one  oz.”  and  even  “  fifteen  oz.”  glass  is  used  in 
the  cheaper  greenhouses. 


204 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


the  square  foot  of  ground),  while  the  other 
houses  have  cost  much  less  than  that.  From 
5d.  to  9d.  the  square  foot  of  glass  *  is  the 
habitual  cost,  without  the  heating  apparatus 
— 6d.  being  a  current  price  for  the  ordinary 
glasshouses. 

But  it  would  be  hardly  possible  to  give  an 
idea  of  all  that  is  grown  in  such  glasshouses, 
without  producing  photographs  of  their  insides. 
In  1890,  on  the  3rd  of  May,  exquisite  grapes 
began  to  be  cut  in  Mr.  Bashford’s  vineries,  and 
the  crop  was  continued  till  October.  In  other 
houses,  cartloads  of  peas  had  already  been 
gathered,  and  tomatoes  were  going  to  take 
their  place  after  a  thorough  cleaning  of  the 
house.  The  20,000  tomato  plants,  which  were 
going  to  be  planted,  had  to  yield  no  less  than 
eighty  tons  of  excellent  fruit  (eight  to  ten  pounds 
per  plant).  In  other  houses  melons  were  grown 
instead  of  the  tomatoes.  Thirty  tons  of  early 
potatoes,  six  tons  of  early  peas,  and  two  tons 
of  early  French  beans  had  already  been  sent 
away  in  April.  As  to  the  vineries,  they  yielded 
no  less  than  twenty-five  tons  of  grapes  every 
year.  Besides,  very  many  other  things  were 
grown  in  the  open  air,  or  as  catch  crops,  and  all 
that  amount  of  fruit  and  vegetables  was  the 

*  It  is  reckoned  by  measuring  the  height  of  the  front  and 
back  walls  and  the  length  of  the  two  slopes  of  the  roof. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


205 


result  of  the  labour  of  thirty -six  men  and  boys 
only,  under  the  supervision  of  one  single  gar¬ 
dener — the  owner  himself  ;  true  that  in  Jersey, 
and  especially  in  Guernsey,  everyone  is  a 
gardener.  About  1,000  tons  of  coke  were  burnt 
to  heat  these  houses.  Mr.  W.  Bear,  who  had 
visited  the  same  establishment  in  1886,  was 
quite  right  to  say  that  from  these  thirteen  acres 
they  obtained  money  returns  equivalent  to 
what  a  farmer  would  obtain  from  1,300  acres  of 
land. 

I  hardly  need  say  that  Mr.  Rider  Haggard, 
who  visited  Jersey  and  Guernsey  in  1901,  gave 
of  these  two  islands  the  same  enthusiastic  de¬ 
scription  as  his  predecessors.  “  I  can  only 
state  in  conclusion,”  he  wrote,  “  that  for  my 
part,  here  (in  Jersey)  as  in  Guernsey,  I  was 
amazed  at  the  prosperity  of  the  place.  That 
so  small  an  area  of  land  can  produce  so  much 
wealth  is  nothing  short  of  astonishing.  It  is 
true,  as  I  have  shown,  that  the  inquirer  hears 
some  grumblings  and  fears  for  the  future ;  but 
when  on  the  top  of  them  he  sees  a  little  patch 
of  twenty-three  and  one-third  acres  of  land, 
such  as  I  have  instanced,  and  is  informed 
that  quite  recently  it  sold  at  an  auction  for 
£5,760,  to  be  used,  not  for  building  sites  but  for 
the  cultivation  of  potatoes,  he  is  perhaps  jus¬ 
tified  in  drawing  his  own  conclusions.”  It  need 


206 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


not  be  added  that,  like  all  his  predecessors, 
Mr.  Haggard  disposes  of  the  legend  of  extra¬ 
ordinary  natural  fertility  of  the  soil,  and  shows 
at  what  a  considerable  expenditure  the  heavy 
crops  of  potatoes  are  obtained.* 

However,  it  is  in  the  small  “  vineries  ”  that 
one  sees,  perhaps,  the  most  admirable  results. 
As  I  walked  through  such  glass-roofed  kitchen 
gardens,  I  could  not  but  admire  this  recent 
conquest  of  man.  I  saw,  for  instance,  three- 
fourths  of  an  acre  heated  for  the  first  three 
months  of  the  year,  from  which  about  eight 
tons  of  tomatoes  and  about  200  lb.  of  French 
beans  had  been  taken  as  a  first  crop  in  April, 
to  be  followed  by  two  crops  more.  In  these 
houses  one  gardener  was  employed  with  two 
assistants,  a  small  amount  of  coke  was  consumed, 
and  there  was  a  gas  engine  for  watering  pur¬ 
poses,  consuming  only  13s.  worth  of  gas  during 
the  quarter.  I  saw  again,  in  cool  greenhouses 
— simple  plank  and  glass  shelters — pea  plants 
covering  the  walls,  for  the  length  of  one  quarter 
of  a  mile,  which  already  had  yielded  by  the  end 
of  April  3,200  lb.  of  exquisite  peas  and  were 
yet  as  full  of  pods  as  if  not  one  had  been  taken 
off. 

I  saw  potatoes  dug  from  the  soil  in  a  cool 
greenhouse,  in  April,  to  the  amount  of  five 

*  Rural  England,  i.,  p.  103. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


207 


bushels  to  the  twenty-one  feet  square.  And 
when  chance  brought  me,  in  1896,  in  company 
with  a  local  gardener,  to  a  tiny,  retired  “  vinery  ” 
of  a  veteran  grower,  I  could  see  there,  and  admire, 
what  a  lover  of  gardening  can  obtain  from  so 
small  a  space  as  the  two-thirds  of  an  acre.  Two 
small  “  houses  ”  about  forty  feet  long  and  twelve 
feet  wide,  and  a  third — formerly  a  pigsty,  twenty 
feet  by  twelve — contained  vine  trees  which  many 
a  professional  gardener  would  be  happy  to  have 
a  look  at ;  especially  the  whilom  pigsty,  fitted 
with  “  Muscats  ”  !  Some  grapes  (in  June)  were 
already  in  full  beauty,  and  one  fully  understands 
that  the  owner  could  get  in  1895,  from  a  local 
dealer,  £4  for  three  bunches  of  grapes  (one  of 
them  was  a  “  Colmar,”  13J  lb.  weight).  The 
tomatoes  and  strawberries  in  the  open  air,  as 
well  as  the  fruit  trees,  all  on  tiny  spaces,  were 
equal  to  the  grapes  ;  and  when  one  is  shown 
on  what  a  space  half  a  ton  of  strawberries  can 
be  gathered  under  proper  culture,  it  is  hardly 
believable. 

It  is  especially  in  Guernsey  that  the  simplifica¬ 
tion  of  the  greenhouse  must  be  studied.  Every 
house  in  the  suburbs  of  St.  Peter  has  some  sort 
of  greenhouse,  big  or  small.  All  over  the  island, 
especially  in  the  north,  wherever  you  look,  you 
see  greenhouses.  They  rise  amid  the  fields  and 
from  behind  the  trees  ;  they  are  piled  upon  one 


208 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


another  on  the  steep  crags  facing  the  harbour 
of  St.  Peter  ;  and  with  them  a  whole  generation 
of  practical  gardeners  has  grown  up.  Every 
farmer  is  more  or  less  of  a  gardener,  and  he  gives 
free  scope  to  his  inventive  powers  for  devising 
some  cheap  type  of  greenhouses.  Some  of  them 
have  almost  no  front  and  back  walls — the  glass 
roofs  coming  low  down  and  the  two  or  three  feet 
of  glass  in  front  simply  reaching  the  ground ;  in 
some  houses  the  lower  sheet  of  glass  was  simply 
plunged  into  a  wooden  trough  standing  on  the 
ground  and  filled  with  sand.  Many  houses  have 
only  two  or  three  planks,  laid  horizontally,  in¬ 
stead  of  the  usual  stone  wall,  in  the  front  of  the 
greenhouse. 

The  large  houses  of  one  big  company  are  built 
close  to  each  other,  and  have  no  partitions 
between.  But  this  system  cannot  be  recom¬ 
mended.  Altogether,  when  I  revisited  Guernsey 
in  1903,  I  saw  that  the  system  of  greenhouses 
which  prevailed  was  that  of  long  two-roofed 
glass  “  tents,”  placed  by  the  side  of  each  other, 
but  separated  from  each  other  by  partitions 
preventing  the  circulation  of  the  air  over  the 
whole  block.  As  to  the  extensive  cool  green¬ 
houses  on  the  Grande  Maison  estate,  which  are 
built  by  a  company  and  are  rented  to  gardeners 
for  so  much  the  100  feet,  they  are  simply  made 
of  thin  deal  board  and  glass.  They  are  on  the 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


209 


“  lean  to  ”  or  “  one  roof  ”  system,  and  the  back 
wall,  ten  feet  high,  and  the  two  side  walls  are 
in  simple  grooved  boards,  standing  upright.  The 
whole  is  supported  by  uprights  inserted  into 
concrete  pillars.  They  are  said  to  cost  not  more 
than  5d.  the  square  foot,  of  glass-covered  ground. 
And  yet,  even  such  plain  and  cheap  houses  yield 
excellent  results.  The  potato  crop  which  had  been 
grown  in  some  of  them  was  excellent,  as  also  the 
green  peas.* 

In  Jersey  I  even  saw  a  row  of  five  houses,  the 
walls  of  which  were  made  of  corrugated  iron,  for 
the  sake  of  cheapness.  Of  course,  the  owner 
himself  was  not  over-sanguine  about  his  houses. 
“  They  are  too  cold  in  winter  and  too  hot  in 
summer.”  But  although  the  five  houses  cover 
only  less  than  one-fifth  of  an  acre,  2,000  lb.  of 
green  peas  had  already  been  sold  as  a  first  crop  ; 
and,  in  the  first  days  of  June,  the  second  crop 
(about  1,500  plants  of  tomatoes)  was  already  in 
good  progress. 

It  is  always  difficult,  of  course,  to  know  what 
are  the  money  returns  of  the  growers,  first  of  all 

*  Growing  peas  along  the  wall  seems,  however,  to  be  a  bad 
system.  It  requires  too  much  work  in  attaching  the  plants  to 
the  wall.  This  system,  however,  excellent  though  it  may  be  for 
a  provisory  start  for  gardeners  who  have  not  much  capital  to 
spend,  is  not  profitable  in  the  long  run.  The  gardeners  with 
whom  I  spoke  in  1903,  after  having  made  some  money  with 
these  light  greenhouses,  preferred  to  build  more  substantial  ones, 
which  could  be  heated  from  January  to  March  or  April. 


210 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


because  Thorold  Rogers’  complaint  about  mod¬ 
ern  farmers  keeping  no  accounts  holds  good, 
even  for  the  best  gardening  establishments,  and 
next  because  when  the  returns  are  known  to  me 
in  all  details,  it  would  not  be  right  for  me  to 
publish  them.  “  Don’t  prove  too  much  ;  be¬ 
ware  of  the  landlord  !  ”  a  practical  gardener  once 
wrote  to  me.  Roughly  speaking,  I  can  only 
confirm  Mr.  Bear’s  estimate  to  the  effect  that 
under  proper  management  even  a  cool  green¬ 
house,  which  covers  4,050  square  feet,  can  give 
a  gross  return  of  £180. 

As  a  rule,  the  Guernsey  and  Jersey  growers 
have  only  three  crops  every  year  from  their 
greenhouses.  They  will  start,  for  instance, 
potatoes  in  December.  The  house  will,  of  course, 
not  be  heated,  fires  being  made  only  when  a 
sharp  frost  is  expected  at  night ;  and  the  potato 
crop  (from  eight  to  ten  tons  per  acre)  will  be 
ready  in  April  or  May  before  the  open-air  potatoes 
begin  to  be  dug  out.  Tomatoes  will  be  planted 
next  and  be  ready  by  the  end  of  the  summer. 
Various  catch  crops  of  peas,  radishes,  lettuce  and 
other  small  things  will  be  taken  in  the  meantime. 
Or  else  the  house  will  be  “  started  ”  in  November 
with  melons,  which  will  be  ready  in  April.  They 
will  be  followed  by  tomatoes,  either  in  pots,  or 
trained  as  vines,  and  the  last  crop  of  tomatoes 
will  be  in  October.  Beans  may  follow  and  be 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


211 


ready  for  Christmas.  I  need  not  say  that  every 
grower  has  his  preference  method  for  utilising 
his  houses,  and  it  entirely  depends  upon  his  skill 
and  watchfulness  to  have  all  sorts  of  small  catch 
crops.  These  last  begin  to  have  a  greater  and 
greater  importance,  and  one  can  already  foresee 
that  the  growers  under  glass  will  be  forced  to 
accept  the  methods  of  the  French  maraichers, 
so  as  to  have  five  and  six  crops  every  year,  so  far 
as  it  can  be  done  without  spoiling  the  present 
high  quality  of  the  produce. 

All  this  industry  is  of  a  relatively  recent  origin. 
One  may  see  it  still  working  out  its  methods. 
And  yet  the  exports  from  Guernsey  alone  are 
already  represented  by  quite  extraordinary 
figures.  It  was  estimated  some  years  ago  that 
they  were  as  follows  :  Grapes,  502  tons,  £37,500 
worth  at  the  average  price  of  9d.  the  pound  ; 
tomatoes,  1,000  tons,  about  £30,000 ;  early 
potatoes  (chiefly  in  the  fields),  £20,000  ;  radishes 
and  broccoli,  £9,250  ;  cut  flowers,  £3,000  ; 
mushrooms,  £200  ;  total,  £99,950 — to  which 
total  the  local  consumption  in  the  houses  and 
hotels,  which  have  to  feed  nearly  30,000  tourists, 
must  be  added.  Since  then  these  figures  have 
grown  considerably.  In  June,  1896,  I  saw  the 
Southampton  steamers  taking  every  day  from 
9,000  to  12,000,  and  occasionally  more,  baskets 
of  fruit  (grapes,  tomatoes,  French  beans  and 


212 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


peas),  each  basket  representing  from  twelve  to 
fourteen  pounds  of  fruit.  Taking  into  account 
what  was  sent  by  other  channels,  one  could  say 
that  from  400  to  500  tons  of  tomatoes,  grapes, 
beans  and  peas,  worth  from  £20,000  to  £25,000, 
were  exported  there  every  week  in  June. 

When  I  returned  to  Guernsey  in  1903,  I  found 
that  the  industry  of  fruit-growing  under  glass 
had  grown  immensely  since  1896,  so  that  the 
whole  system  of  export  had  to  be  reorganised. 
In  1896  it  was  the  tourists’  boats  which  trans¬ 
ported  the  fruit  and  vegetables  to  Southampton, 
and  the  gardeners  paid  one  shilling  for  each 
basket  taken  at  Guernsey  and  delivered  at  the 
Covent  Garden  market.  In  1903  there  was 
already  a  Guernsey  Growers’  Association,  which 
had  its  own  boats  keeping,  during  the  summer, 
a  regular  daily  service  direct  from  Guernsey  to 
London.  The  Association  had  its  own  store¬ 
houses  on  the  quay  and  its  own  cranes,  which 
lifted  immense  cubic  boxes  containing  on  their 
shelves  twenty  or  even  a  hundred  baskets,  and 
carrying  them  to  the  boats.  The  cost  of  trans¬ 
port  was  thus  reduced  to  4d.  per  basket.  All  this 
crop  is  sold  every  morning  at  Covent  Garden  to 
the  London  dealers  and  greengrocers.  The  im¬ 
portance  of  this  export  is  seen  from  the  fact 
that  a  special  steamer  has  to  leave  Guernsey 
every  morning  with  its  cargo  of  fruit  and  vege- 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


213 


tables.  As  to  the  total  exports  of  fresh  flowers, 
plants  and  shrubs,  various  fruit  and  vegetables 
(including  £555,275  worth  of  potatoes),  they 
reached  £1,115,650  in  1910. 

All  this  is  obtained  from  an  island  whose 
total  area,  rocks  and  barren  hill-tops  included, 
is  only  16,000  acres,  of  which  only  9,884  acres 
are  under  culture,  and  5,189  acres  are  given  to 
green  crops  and  meadows.  An  island,  more¬ 
over,  on  which  1,480  horses,  7,260  head  of  cattle 
and  900  sheep  find  their  existence.  How  many 
men’s  food  is,  then,  grown  on  these  10,000 
acres  ? 

Belgium  has  also  made,  within  the  last  few 
years,  an  immense  progress  in  the  same  direc¬ 
tion.  While  no  more  than  250  acres,  all  taken, 
were  covered  with  glass  some  thirty  years  ago, 
more  than  800  acres  are  under  glass  by  this 
time.*  In  the  village  of  Hoeilaert,  which  is 
perched  upon  a  stony  hill,  nearly  200  acres  are 
under  glass,  given  up  to  grape-growing.  One 
single  establishment,  Baltet  remarks,  has  200 
greenhouses  and  consumes  1,500  tons  of  coal  for 
the  vineries. f  “  Cheap  coal — cheap  grapes,” 

*  I  take  these  figures  from  the  notes  which  a  Belgian  pro¬ 
fessor  of  agriculture  was  kind  enough  to  send  me.  The  green¬ 
houses  in  Belgium  are  mostly  with  iron  frames 

f  A  friend,  who  has  studied  practical  horticulture  in  the 
Channel  Islands,  writes  me  of  the  vineries  about  Brussels  :  “  You 
have  no  idea  to  what  an  extent  it  is  done  there.  Bashford  is 
nothing  against  it.” 


214 


*  THE  POSSIBILITIES 


as  the  editor  of  the  Journal  of  Horticulture  wrote. 
Grapes  in  Brussels  are  certainly  not  dearer  in 
the  beginning  of  the  summer  than  they  are  in 
Switzerland  in  October.  Even  in  March ,  Bel¬ 
gian  grapes  were  sold  in  Covent  Garden  at  from 
4d.  and  6d.  the  pound.*  This  price  alone  shows 
sufficiently  how  small  are  the  amounts  of  labour 
which  are  required  to  grow  grapes  in  our  latitudes 
with  the  aid  of  glass.  It  certainly  costs  less 
labour  to  grow  grapes  in  Belgium  than  to  grow 
them  on  the  coasts  of  Lake  Leman. f 

I  will  not  conclude  this  chapter  without 
casting  a  glance  on  the  progress  that  has  been 
made  in  this  country  since  the  first  edition  of  this 
book  was  published,  in  1898,  by  fruit  and  flower 
farming,  as  also  by  culture  under  glass,  and  on 
the  attempts  recently  made  to  introduce  in 
different  parts  of  England  “  French  Gardening,” 
— that  is,  the  culture  maraichere  of  the  French 
gardeners. 

There  is  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  fruit¬ 
growing  has  notably  increased — the  area  under 
fruit  orchards  having  grown  in  Great  Britain 
from  200,000  acres  in  1888  to  250,000  acres  in 
1908  ;  while  the  area  under  small  fruit  (goose- 

*  A  quotation  which  I  took  at  random,  in  1895,  from  a  London 
daily,  was  :  “  Covent  Garden,  19th  March,  1895.  Quotations  : 
Belgian  grapes,  4d.  to  6d.  ;  Jersey  ditto,  Gel.  to  lOd.  ;  Muscats, 
Is.  6d.  to  2s. ;  and  tomatoes,  3d.  to  5d.  per  lb.” 

f  See  Appendix  S. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


215 


berries,  currants,  strawberries)  has  grown  from 
75,000  acres  in  1901  to  85,000  in  1908.*  In 
fact,  in  some  counties  the  acreage  has  trebled. f 
Large  plantations  of  fruit  have  grown  lately 
round  London  and  all  the  large  cities,  and  the 
counties  of  Kent,  Devon,  Hereford,  Somerset, 
Worcester  and  Gloucester  have  now  more 
than  20,000  acres  each  under  fruit  orchards, 
a  great  proportion  of  them  being  of  a  recent 
origin.  Not  only  was  the  area  of  fruit-growing 
considerably  increased,  but,  owing  to  the  ex¬ 
periments  carried  on  since  1894  at  the  Woburn 
Experimental  Farm,  where  different  sorts  of 
fruit-trees  and  small  fruit  are  tested,  new  varie¬ 
ties  have  been  introduced  ;  and  the  system  is 
spreading  of  growing  fruit  trees  of  the  pyramidal 
or  “  bush  ”  form  (instead  of  the  old-fashioned 
standards) — a  step  the  advantages  of  which  I 
was  enabled  fully  to  appreciate  in  1897  at  the 
Agassiz  Experimental  Farm  in  British  Columbia. 

At  the  same  time  the  culture  of  small  fruit — 
gooseberries,  raspberries,  currants,  and  especially 
strawberries — took  an  immense  development. 
Enormous  quantities  of  strawberries  are  now 

*  Out  of  them,  27,000  acres  are  grown  in  the  fruit  orchards, 
between  the  apple  and  cherry  tree,  so  that  the  total  area  under 
fruit  orchards  and  small  fruit  was  reckoned  at  308,000  acres  in 
1908. 

f  “Fruit  and  Flower  Farming,”  in  Encyclopaedia  Britan- 
nica,  11th  edition,  article  by  J.  Weathers. 


216 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


grown  in  Mid  and  South  Kent,  where  we  find  the 
culture  of  fruit  combined  with  large  jam  factories. 
One  of  such  factories  is  connected  with  great 
fruit  farms  covering  2,000  acres  at  Swanley,  and 
its  yearly  output  attains  3,500  tons  of  jam, 
850  tons  of  candied  peel,  and  more  than  100,000 
bottles  of  bottled  fruit.  An  extensive  horti¬ 
culture  has  also  developed  of  late  in  Cambridge¬ 
shire,  wherefrom  fruit  is  sent  partly  fresh  to 
London  and  Manchester,  and  partly  is  trans¬ 
formed  on  the  spot  in  the  jam  factory  at  Histon. 
No  less  than  250  workpeople  were  employed  at 
this  factory  at  the  time  of  Rider  Haggard’s  visit 
in  1900,  and  no  less  than  7,600  tons  were  ex¬ 
ported  ;  the  most  interesting  result  of  this  in¬ 
dustry  combined  with  agriculture  being  that 
quite  a  number  of  small  farmers,  renting  from 
three  to  twenty  acres  each,  have  grown  round  the 
jam  factory.  “  Altogether,”  Mr.  Haggard  wrote, 
“  fruit  and  flower  culture  has  increased  enor¬ 
mously ;  so  that,  in  1901,  from  4,000  to  5,000 
acres  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Wisbech  were 
devoted  to  this  trade.  Plums,  apples,  pears, 
small  fruit,  as  also  cauliflowers,  asparagus, 
rhubarb,  narcissi,  pansies  and  other  flowers 
were  grown  here  on  a  grand  scale,  and  as  much 
as  from  130  to  140  tons  of  gooseberries  and  from 
60  to  70  tons  of  strawberries  were  despatched 
from  Wisbech  in  one  single  day.”  “  The  result  of 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


217 


this  industry,”  Mr.  Haggard  adds,  “  was  that  the 
population  of  Wisbech  and  the  number  of  houses 
in  this  little  town  have  rapidly  increased ; 
the  land  has  increased  in  value  considerably  in 
the  past  twenty  years,  and  as  much  as  £200  an 
acre  had  been  given  for  choice  land-holdings 
suitable  for  fruit  culture.”  (Rural  England , 
vol.  ii.,  pp.  52,  54,  55.)  In  other  words,  the  net 
result  of  the  labour  spent  by  the  farmers  and  of 
the  intelligent  enterprise  of  the  industrials  was, 
as  everywhere,  immensely  to  increase  the  value 
of  the  land  for  the  benefit  of  the  landlords. 
Mr.  Haggard’s  conclusion  is  worth  mention¬ 
ing,  as  he  writes  as  follows  :  “  Broadly,  however, 
I  may  say  that  where  the  farms  are  large  and 
corn  is  chiefly  grown,  there  is  little  or  no  pros¬ 
perity,  while  where  they  are  small  and  assisted 
by  pastures  or  fruit  culture,  both  owners  and 
tenants  are  doing  fairly  well.”  *  A  recognition 
well  worth  mentioning,  as  it  comes  from  an 
explorer  who  took  at  the  outset  of  his  inquest 
a  most  pessimistic  view  on  unprotected  agri¬ 
culture. 

I  also  ought  to  mention  Essex,  where  fruit¬ 
growing  has  taken  of  late  a  notable  develop¬ 
ment,  and  Hampshire,  where  the  acreage  under 
fruit  has  trebled  since  1880,  according  to  the 

*  Rural  England,  2  vols.,  London  (Longmans,  Green),  1902, 

vol.  ii.,  p.  57. 


218 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


testimony  of  the  author  of  the  already  mentioned 
Britannica  article.  The  same  must  be  said  of 
Worcestershire,  and  especially  of  the  Evesham 
district.  This  last  is  a  most  instructive  region. 
Owing  to  certain  peculiarities  of  its  soil,  which 
render  it  very  profitable  for  growing  asparagus 
and  plum  trees,  and  partly  owing  to  the  main¬ 
tenance  in  this  region  of  the  old  “  Evesham 
custom  ”  (according  to  which  from  times  imme¬ 
morial  the  ingoing  tenant  had  to  pay  the  outgoing 
tenant,  not  the  landlord,  for  the  agricultural 
improvements) — a  custom  maintained  till  nowa¬ 
days* — the  small-holdings  system  and  the  culture 
of  vegetables  and  fruit  have  developed  to  a 
remarkable  extent.  The  result  is  that  out  of  a 
rural  area  of  10,000  acres,  7,000  have  already 
been  taken  in  small  holdings  of  under  fifty  acres 
each,  and  the  demand  for  them,  far  from  being 
satisfied,  is  still  on  the  increase,  so  that  in 
1911  there  were  still  nearly  four  hundred  farmers 
waiting  for  2,000  acres.  A  new  town  has  grown 
at  Evesham,  its  population  of  8,340  persons  being 
almost  entirely  composed  of  gardeners  and  gar¬ 
deners’  labourers  ;  its  markets,  held  twice  a 
week,  remind  one  of  markets  in  the  south  of 

*  F.  E.  Green,  The  Awakening  of  England ,  London  (Nelson’s), 
1911,  pp.  49,  50.  Speaking  of  a  certain  farmer,  Mr.  Green 
says  :  “  In  the  autumn  of  1910,  when  I  visited  him,  he  was 
offered  £100  an  acre  for  his  standing  crops,  and  £100  for  the  tenant 
rights.  He  refused  the  offer.  His  rent  still  stands  at  £2  an  acre.” 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


219 


France  ;  and  the  export  traffic  on  the  railways 
radiating  from  that  little  town  is  as  lively  as 
if  it  were  a  busy  industrial  spot. 

One  cannot  read  the  pages  given  by  Mr. 
Rider  Haggard  to  the  Bewdley  and  Evesham 
districts  without  being  impressed  by  what  can 
be  obtained  from  the  soil  in  England,  and  by 
what  has  to  be  done  by  the  nation  and  all  those 
who  care  for  its  well-being  in  obtaining  from  the 
soil  what  it  is  ready  to  give,  if  only  labour  be 
applied  to  it. 

In  the  Bewdley  district  we  see  very  well 
how  the  efforts  of  a  Small  Holdings  Society  are 
giving  the  opportunity  to  a  number  of  small 
farmers  to  transform  an  indifferent  and  some¬ 
times  very  poor  or  stony  land  into  a  fertile  soil 
which  yields  rich  crops  of  fruit,  and  upon  which 
the  keeping  of  milch-cows  is  combined  with 
fruit-growing.  We  see  also  how  in  the  big  farms, 
as  well  as  in  the  small  ones,  fruit-growing  is 
carried  on  with  knowledge  and  care — and, 
consequently,  with  a  substantial  profit  for  both 
the  community  and  the  farmers — which  makes 
the  author  exclaim  :  “  How  different  in  most 
counties  !  In  Norfolk,  for  instance  (and  I  may 
add  in  Devonshire),  the  ordinary  farm  orchard 
is  stocked  as  a  rule  with  faggot-headed  trees 
pruned  only  by  the  wind.  Even  the  dead  wood 
is  left  uncut ;  yet  it  is  common  to  hear  farmers 


220 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


complain  of  the  quality  of  the  fruit,  and  that  it 
will  not  pay  to  grow  ”  (vol.  i.,  p.  338). 

Speaking  of  Catshill,  Mr.  Haggard  gives  also 
a  very  interesting  instance  of  how  a  colony  of 
people  called  “  Nailers,”  who  lived  formerly  by 
making  nails  by  hand,  and  compelled  to  abandon 
this  trade  when  machine-made  nails  were  intro¬ 
duced,  took  to  agriculture,  and  how  they  succeed 
with  it.  Some  intelligent  people  having  bought 
a  farm  of  140  acres  and  divided  it  into  small 
farms,  from  2-|  to  8  acres,  these  small  hold¬ 
ings  were  offered  to  the  nailers  ;  and  at  the 
time  of  Mr.  Haggard’s  visit  “  every  instalment 
which  was  due  had  been  paid  up.”  No  able- 
bodied  man  out  of  them  has  gone  on  to  the 
rates. 

But  the  vale  of  Evesham  is  still  more  in¬ 
teresting.  Suffice  it  to  say,  that  while  in  most 
rural  parishes  the  population  is  decreasing,  it 
rose  in  the  six  'parishes  of  the  Evesham  Union 
from  7,327  to  9,012  in  the  ten  years,  1891  to 
1901.  I 

Although  the  soil  of  this  district  offers  nothing 
extraordinary,  and  the  conditions  of  sale  are  as  bad 
as  anywhere,  owing  to  the  importance  acquired 
by  the  middlemen,  we  see  that  an  extremely 
important  industry  of  fruit-growing  has  devel¬ 
oped  ;  so  important  that  in  the  year  1 900  about 
20,000  tons  of  fruit  and  vegetables  were  sent 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


221 


from  the  Evesham  stations,  in  addition  to  large 
quantities  exported  from  the  small  stations 
within  a  radius  of  ten  miles  round  Evesham 
(vol.  i.,  p.  350).  The  soil,  of  course,  is  improved 
by  digging  into  it  large  quantities  of  all  sorts 
of  manure — soot,  fish  guano,  leather  dust  for 
cabbage  (chamois  dust  being  the  best),  and  so 
on — and  the  most  profitable  sorts  of  fruit-trees 
and  vegetables  are  continually  tested ;  all  this 
being,  of  course,  not  the  work  of  some  scientist 
or  of  one  single  man,  but  the  product  of  the 
collective  experience  of  the  district. 

It  must  not  be  thought,  however,  that  fruit¬ 
growing  has  been  overdone.  On  the  contrary, 
the  imports  of  fruit  into  the  United  Kingdom, 
both  for  food  and  for  jam-making,  continue 
to  be  enormous,  and  to  increase  every  year. 
Suffice  it  to  say,  that  this  country  imports  every 
year  about  £1,000,000  of  tomatoes  and  £2,000,000 
of  apples,  half  a  million  worth  of  pears,  nearly 
£730,000  worth  of  grapes — giving  thus  a  total 
of  £4,200,000  worth  of  all  fruit.  And  at  the  same 
time  we  learn  that  immense  quantities  of  land 
go  every  year  out  of  culture,  to  be  transformed 
into  game  reserves  for  rich  Englishmen  and 
foreigners. 

Finally,  I  also  ought  to  mention  the  recent 
development  of  fruit  culture  near  the  Broads 
of  Norfolk,  and  especially  in  Ireland  ;  but  the 


222 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


examples  just  given  will  do  to  show  what  is 
obtained  from  the  land  in  England  where  no 
obstacle  is  laid  to  the  development  of  horti¬ 
culture,  and  what  amount  of  food  can  be  ob¬ 
tained  in  the  climate  and  from  the  soil  of  this 
country  whenever  it  is  properly  cultivated. 
Let  me  only  add  that  a  similar  development  of 
fruit  culture  has  taken  place  within  the  last 
thirty  years  everywhere  in  the  civilised  coun¬ 
tries  ;  and  that  in  France,  in  Belgium,  and  in 
Germany  the  extension  taken  by  horticulture 
during  the  last  twenty  or  thirty  years  has  been 
much  greater  than  in  this  country.* 

As  regards  market-gardening ,  it  has  un¬ 
doubtedly  made  remarkable  progress  in  the 
United  Kingdom  within  recent  years.  How¬ 
ever,  accurate  data  are  failing,  and  those  who 
have  travelled  over  this  country  with  the  special 
purpose  of  studying  its  agriculture  have  not 
yet  given  sufficient  attention  to  the  recent 
developments  of  market-gardening ;  but  it  is 
quite  certain  that  within  the  last  five-and- 
twenty  years  it  has  taken  a  great  development, 
especially  in  Ireland,  but  also  in  several  parts 
of  England,  Scotland,  and  Wales. 

Such  are,  for  instance,  the  neighbourhoods 

*  According  to  the  researches  made  by  the  French  Ministry 
of  Agriculture,  the  yearly  produce  of  the  French  horticulturists 
attains  the  value  of  £16,000,000. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


223 


of  Penzance,  in  Cornwall ;  those  of  St.  Neots, 
in  Huntingdonshire  ;  Scotter,  in  Lincolnshire, 
where  the  agricultural  depression — we  are  told 
by  Mr.  Rider  Haggard — was  not  so  badly  felt 
as  elsewhere  on  account  of  market-gardening ; 
Benington,  in  the  same  county,  where  the  soil 
is  a  rich  loam  with  silty  subsoil,  and  where  all 
Sorts  of  vegetables,  potatoes,  and  flower-bulbs 
are  grown  on  a  large  scale,  together  with  wheat.* 
Orpington  is  a  well-known  centre  for  market¬ 
gardening,  as  well  as  for  fruit-growing,  and 
in  this  district  culture  under  glass  has  also 
taken  lately  some  extension. 

There  are  many  other  interesting  centres  of 
market-gardening,  especially  in  the  neighbour¬ 
hoods  of  all  large  cities,  but  I  will  mention  only 
one  more — namely,  Potton,  in  Huntingdon¬ 
shire.  It  is — we  are  told  by  Mr.  Haggard — 
“  a  stronghold  of  small  cultivators  who  grow 
vegetables  upon  holdings  of  land  varying  in 
size  from  one  up  to  twenty  acres,  or  even  more.” 


*  Rural  England,  ii.,  pp.  76,  212.  Spalding,  also  in  Lincoln¬ 
shire,  is  another  centre  for  the  trade  in  spring  flowers,  as  well 
as  for  intensive  farming,  co-operative  small-holding  having  been 
introduced  there  by  the  Provident  and  Small- Holdings  Club 
(same  work,  ii.,  pp.  238-240).  More  than  1,000  acres  are  now 
given  to  the  growing  of  flowers — an  industry  which  was  intro¬ 
duced  only  fifteen  years  ago,  when  it  came  from  Holland.  On 
p.  242  of  the  same  work  the  reader  will  find  some  interesting 
information  about  a  new  “  mutualist  ”  venture,  the  Lincoln 
Equitable  Co-operative  Society. 


224 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


It  has  thus  become  an  important  centre  for 
market-gardening,  “120  trucks  of  produce 
leaving  Potton  daily  during  the  season  for 
London,  in  addition  to  fifty  trucks  which  pass 
over  the  Great  Northern  line  from  Sandy  station, 
together  with  much  more  from  sidings  and  other 
stations.”  This  is  the  more  interesting  as 
within  a  short  distance  from  this  animated 
centre  “  thousands  of  acres  are  quite  or  very 
nearly  derelict,  and  the  farmhouses,  buildings, 
and  cottages  are  slowly  rotting  down.”  The 
worst  is  that  “  all  this  land  was  cultivated,  and 
grew  crops  up  to  the  ’eighties.”  * 

Another  oasis  of  market-gardening  is  offered 
by  the  county  of  Bedfordshire.  “  Being  a 
county  of  natural  small-holdings,  carved  out 
before  the  passing  of  the  1907  Act,”  it  is  rapidly 
becoming — we  are  told  by  Mr.  F.  E.  Green — 
“  a  county  of  market-gardens.”  The  fertility 
of  its  soil,  the  fact  that  it  can  easily  be  worked 
at  any  time  of  the  year,  and  that  a  race  of 
skilled  gardeners  has  developed  there  long 
since,  have  contributed  to  that  growth  ;  but, 
of  course,  the  whole  is  hampered  by  the  heavy 
rents,  which  have  grown  up  to  £4  an  acre  for 
the  sites  near  the  station,  where  manure  is 
received  in  large  quantities  from  London,  f 

*  Rural  England ,  ii.,  59. 

t  E.  E.  Green,  The  Awakening  of  England,  pp.  116,  117. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


225 


Happily  enough,  the  Bedfordshire  County  Coun¬ 
cil  has  been  eager  to  acquire  land  for  small 
holdings,  and,  after  having  spent  £40,000  in  the 
acquisition  of  land,  they  have,  up  to  30th  June, 
1911,  provided  one-third  of  the  applicants  with 
2,759  acres — the  total  demand,  by  a  thousand 
applicants,  having  already  attained  12,350  acres. 

And  yet  all  this  progress  still  appears  in¬ 
significant  by  the  side  of  the  demand  for  vege¬ 
tables  which  grows  every  year  (and  necessarily 
must  grow,  as  is  seen  by  comparing  the  low  con¬ 
sumption  of  vegetables  in  this  country  with 
the  consumption  of  home-grown  vegetables  in 
Belgium,  indicated  by  Mr.  Rowntree  in  his 
Lessons  from  Belgium).  The  result  is  a  steadily 
increasing  importation  of  vegetables  to  this 
country,  which  has  attained  now  more  than 
£8,000,000.* 

*  The  imports  of  fruit  and  vegetables,  fresh  and  preserved, 
were  £12,900,000  in  1909,  and  £14,193,000  in  1911,  out  of  which 
fruit  alone  must  have  figured  for  at  least  £4,000,000.  Potatoes 
alone,  imported  and  retained  for  home  consumption  in  the 
United  Kingdom,  figure  in  this  item  for  the  sums  of  from 
£6,908,550  in  1908  to  £3,314,200  in  1910.  The  industry  of  dried 
fruit,  and  especially  of  dried  vegetables,  has  not  yet  developed 
in  this  country,  the  result  being  that  during  the  Boer  War 
Britain  paid  a  weekly  tribute  to  Germany  for  dried  vegetables, 
which  attained  many  thousands  of  pounds  every  week.  A  nation 
cannot  let  its  land  bo  transformed  into  hunting  reserves  at  the 
rate  it  is  being  done  in  this  country  without  having  to  send 
the  best  and  the  most  enterprising  portion  of  its  population  over¬ 
seas,  and  without  relying  for  its  daily  food  upon  its  neigh¬ 
bours  and  commercial  rivals. 


8 


226 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


A  branch  of  horticulture  which  has  increased 
enormously  since  the  first  edition  of  this  book 
was  published,  is  the  growing  of  fruit  and  vege¬ 
tables  in  greenhouses ,  in  the  same  way  as  it  is 
done  in  the  Channel  Islands.  All  round  London 
— we  are  told  by  Mr.  John  Weathers  in  the  last 
edition  of  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica — the 
hothouse  culture  has  taken  a  great  develop¬ 
ment,  and,  in  fact,  along  the  railways  which 
radiate  from  London  in  all  directions  the 
glass-houses  have  already  become  a  familiar 
feature  of  the  landscape.  Immense  quantities 
of  grapes,  tomatoes,  figs,  and  of  all  sorts  of 
early  vegetables  are  grown  at  Worthing,  where 
eighty-two  acres  are  covered  now  with  glass¬ 
houses,  as  also  in  the  parish  of  Cheshunt,  in 
Herts,  where  the  area  under  hothouses  is  already 
130  acres  ;  while  a  careful  estimate  put  in  1908 
the  area  of  individual  hothouses  in  England 
at  about  1,200  acres  (Encyclopedia  Britannica , 
vol.  xi.,  p.  266).  The  elements  of  this  culture 
having  been  developed  by  the  experience  of 
the  Channel  Islands  growers,  and  by  the  wide 
extension  which  hothouses  for  the  growing  of 
flowers  had  taken  long  since  in  this  country, 
it  may  be  concluded  from  the  various  evidence 
we  have  at  hand  that  on  the  whole  this  sort 
of  culture  is  finding  its  reward,  and  is  now 
firmly  established. 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


227 


The  same,  however,  cannot  yet  be  said  of 
the  culture  maraichere  of  the  French  market- 
gardeners  which  is  being  introduced  now  into 
this  country.  Many  attempts  have  been  made 
in  this  direction  in  different  parts  of  the  country 
with  varied  degrees  of  success  ;  but  little  or 
nothing  is  known  about  the  results.  An  at¬ 
tempt  on  a  large  scale  was  made,  as  is  known, 
by  some  Evesham  gardeners.  Having  read 
about  this  sort  of  culture  in  France,  and  the 
wonderful  results  obtained  by  it,  some  of  the 
Evesham  gardeners  went  to  Paris  with  the 
intention  of  learning  that  culture  from  the 
Paris  maraichers.  Finding  that  impossible,  they 
invited  a  French  gardener  to  Evesham,  gave 
him  three-quarters  of  an  acre,  and,  after  he  had 
brought  from  his  Paris  marais  his  glass-bells, 
frames  and  lights,  and,  above  all,  his  know¬ 
ledge,  he  began  gardening  under  the  eyes  of 
his  Evesham  colleagues.  “  Happily  enough,”  he 
said  to  an  interviewer,  “  I  do  not  speak  English  ; 
otherwise  I  should  have  had  to  talk  all  the  time 
and  give  explanations,  instead  of  working. 
So  I  show  them  my  black  trousers,  and  tell 
them  in  signs  :  4  Begin  by  making  the  soil  as 
black  as  these  trousers,  then  everything  will 
be  all  right.’  ”  Of  course,  to  be  profitable, 
immense  quantities  of  stable  manure  are  re¬ 
quired,  as  also  immense  numbers  of  glass- 


228 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


bells  and  glass-frames,  which  represent  a  very 
costly  outlay,  and  plenty  of  watering,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  powers  of  observation  required 
for  developing  a  new  branch  of  gardening  in 
new  surroundings. 

What  were  the  results  obtained  at  Evesham 
it  is  difficult  to  say,  the  more  so  as  the  money 
results  which,  according  to  some  papers,  were 
obtained  the  first  year  ( brutto  income  of  £750 
from  three-quarters  of  an  acre)  seem  to  have 
been  exaggerated  for  a  first-year  crop,  and  thus 
awakened  scepticism  with  regard  to  that  sort 
of  culture  altogether. 

Another  experiment  in  the  same  direction  was 
made  on  the  estate  of  Mayland,  in  Essex,  which 
was  bought  by  Mr.  Joseph  Fels  in  order  to 
promote  small  farming  in  England.  It  must 
be  said  that,  apart  from  the  cold,  damp  climate 
of  this  part  of  England,  the  heavy  clay  of  Essex 
represents  the  least  appropriate  soil  for  spade 
culture.  In  England,  as  everywhere,  this  sort 
of  culture  has  always  been  developing  in  pre¬ 
ference  on  a  light  loam ,  or  in  such  places,  like 
Jersey,  where  a  meagre  granitic  soil  could 
easily  be  manured — in  this  special  case  by  sea¬ 
weeds. 

Nevertheless,  the  aim  of  Mr.  Fels  having  been 
chiefly  educational,  this  aim  has  certainly  been 
achieved,  as  we  have  now,  in  three  different 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


229 


works  of  Mr.  Thomas  Smith,  the  manager  of 
the  farm,  practical  manuals  teaching  the 
would-be  gardener  the  essentials  of  “  French 
Gardening.”  * 

A  French  maraicher  having  been  invited 
for  this  purpose,  and  2,500  glass-bells,  1,000 
lights  for  frames,  a  windmill  pump,  etc.,  having 
been  bought  at  a  considerable  cost,  the  work 
of  the  French  gardener  on  two  acres  of  land 
was  carefully  followed  by  the  manager  of  the 
farm,  Mr.  T.  Smith,  day  by  day,  to  be  afterwards 
described  and  illustrated  by  photographs  for 
the  use  of  those  who  would  like  to  try  their 
hand  at  the  same  work. 

Most  of  my  readers  will  probably  ask  first  of 
all :  What  were  the  money  results  of  this  ven¬ 
ture  ?  But  it  would  have  been  foolish  to  expect 
that  in  this  first  experiment  everything  should 
have  run  as  smoothly  as  it  runs,  let  us  say,  in 
the  Channel  Islands,  where  the  many  years’ 
practice  of  a  whole  population  has  worked  out 
the  best  methods  of  culture. 

Thus  the  frames  were  not  ready  in  time 
for  giving  an  early  crop  of  melons  ;  and  al¬ 
though  the  melons  grown  at  Mayland  were 

*  Thomas  Smith,  French  Gardening,  London  (Utopia  Press), 
1909,  128  pp.  ;  The  Profitable  Culture  of  Vegetables,  for  Market 
Gardeners,  Small  Holders,  and  Others,  London  (Longmans, 
Green),  1911,  452  pp. ;  and  a  short  summing  up  of  the  first 
of  these  works. 


230 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


excellent,  and  gave  the  first  year  as  much  as 
£188,  they  would  have  given  much  more  than 
that  had  they  been  ready  in  the  middle  of 
June,  which  would  have  been  possible  if  the 
frames  and  lights  had  been  supplied  in  time. 

With  all  that,  the  results  obtained  during  the 
first  year  were  really  striking.  All  taken,  Mr. 
Smith  shows  that  if  the  gardener  has  a  one- 
acre  garden,  and  if  £494  (say,  £550)  be  spent 
for  1,000  glass-bells,  300  lights  and  100  frames, 
500  mats,  the  water-supply,  the  packing- 
shed,  the  fencing,  the  cart,  horse  and  harness, 
etc.,  and  £413  (say,  £450)  for  500  tons  of 
manure,  the  rent,  rates  and  water,  and  the 
wages  and  salaries  (£250),  the  gross  returns 
for  the  first  year  would  reach  £300  (making 
full  allowance  for  “  inexperience  in  this  special 
work  ”).  They  would  reach  from  £400  to  £450 
during  the  second  year,  there  being  greater 
productiveness  and  a  lower  expenditure  after 
the  loam  has  been  made  by  heavy  manuring, 
and  personal  experience  has  been  won,  as  well 
as  experience  for  a  given  locality. 

Taking  a  one-acre  farm,  of  which  only  one- 
third  is  used  for  a  French  garden,  the  first 
year’s  expenditure  for  bells,  lights,  fencing,  horse 
manure,  water,  and  rent  and  taxes  would 
be  a  little  less  than  £300,  and  the  returns  by 
the  end  of  the  first  year  would  be  about  £150. 


OF  AGRICULTURE.  231 

“Afterwards  the  returns  ought  to  reach  from 
£200  to  £250  each  year,”  Mr.  Smith  writes. 

All  that  need  be  added  to  these  words  is,  that 
Mr.  Smith  is  extremely  cautious  in  his  esti¬ 
mates,  and  that,  seeing  the  high  crops  obtained 
at  Mayland,  and  fully  dealt  with  in  Mr.  Smith’s 
works,  one  is  entitled  to  expect  even  better 
money  results. 

Unfortunately,  after  having  worked  at  the 
farm  for  one  year,  the  experienced  French 
gardener,  who  had  obtained  the  just-mentioned 
results,  left  Mayland.  Two  young  French 
gardeners,  far  less  experienced,  were  invited 
instead,  and  they  began  to  undo  what  their 
predecessor  had  done,  in  order  to  carry  on  the 
work  on  the  lines  they  had  learned  themselves. 
So  that  it  is  impossible  to  know  yet  what  the 
results  of  these  new  methods  will  be. 

Every  pioneer  work  has  its  unforeseen  diffi¬ 
culties.  But,  so  far  as  can  be  judged  from 
the  facts  I  have  at  my  disposal,  the  two  ven¬ 
tures  have  proved  that  the  climate  of  England 
is  no  obstacle  to  French  gardening.  Of  course, 
the  small  amount  of  sunshine  is  a  great  obstacle 
for  ripening  the  produce  as  early  as  it  can  be 
ripened  in  France,  even  in  the  suburbs  of  Paris. 
But  home-grown  fruit  and  vegetables  have 
always  many  advantages  in  comparison  with 
imported  produce.  Another  disadvantage — the 


232 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


lack  of  horse  manure — a  disadvantage  which 
will  go  on  increasing  with  the  spread  of 
motor  cars — is  felt  in  France  as  well.  This  is 
why  the  French  growers  are  eagerly  experi¬ 
menting  with  the  direct  heating  of  the  soil 
with  thermosiphons. 

Let  me  add  to  these  remarks  that  a  decided 
awakening  is  to  be  noticed  in  this  country  for 
making  a  better  use  of  the  land  than  has  been 
made  for  the  last  fifty  years.  There  are  a  few 
counties  where  the  County  Councils,  and  still 
more  so,  the  Parish  Councils,  are  doing  their 
best  to  break  at  last  the  land  monopoly,  and  to 
permit  those  small  farmers  who  intend  to 
cultivate  the  soil  to  do  so.  Here  and  there 
we  see  a  few  timid  attempts  at  imparting  to 
the  farmers  and  their  children  some  knowledge 
of  agriculture  and  horticulture.  But  all  this 
is  being  made  on  too  small  a  scale,  and  without 
a  sincere  desire  to  learn  from  other  European 
nations,  and  still  more  so  from  the  United 
States  and  Canada,  what  is  being  done  in 
these  countries  to  give  to  agriculture  the  new 
character  of  intensive  culture  combine*}  with 
industry,  which  is  imposed  upon  it  by  the 
recent  progress  of  civilisation. 

The  various  data  which  have  been  brought 
together  on  the  preceding  pages  make  short 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


233 


work  of  the  over-population  fallacy.  It  is  pre-~) 
cisely  in  the  most  densely  populated  parts  of  ( 
the  world  that  agriculture  has  lately  made  such^ 
strides  as  hardly  could  have  been  guessed  twenty 
years  ago.  A  dense  population,  a  high  develop- 
ment  of  industry,  and  a  high  development  of 
agriculture  and  horticulture,  go  hand  in  hand  : 
they  are  inseparable.  As  to  the  future,  the 
possibilities  of  agriculture  are  such  that,  in 
truth,  we  cannot  yet  foretell  what  would  be  the 
limit  of  the  population  which  could  live  from 
the  produce  of  a  given  area.  Recent  progress, 
already  tested  on  a  great  scale,  has  widened 
the  limits  of  agricultural  production  to  a  quite 
unforeseen  extent  ;  and  recent  discoveries, 
now  tested  on  a  small  scale,  promise  to  widen 
those  limits  still  farther,  to  a  quite  unknown 
degree.* 

The  present  tendency  of  economical  develop-^ 
ment  in  the  world  is — we  have  seen — to  induce  \ 
more  and  more  every  nation,  or  rather  every  \ 
region,  taken  in  its  geographical  sense,  to  rely  ) 
chiefly  upon  a  home  production  of  all  the  chief 
necessaries  of  life.  Not  to  reduce,  I  mean, 
the  world-exchange  :  it  may  still  grow  in  bulk  ; 
but  to  limit  it  to  the  exchange  of  what  really 
must  be  exchanged,  and,  at  the  same  time, 
immensely  to  increase  the  exchange  of  novel- 

*  See  Appendix- T. 


234 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


ties,  produce  of  local  or  national  art,  new 
discoveries  and  inventions,  knowledge  and 
ideas.  Such  being  the  tendency  of  present 
development,  there  is  not  the  slightest  ground 
to  be  alarmed  by  it.  There  is  not  one  nation  in 
the  world  which,  being  armed  with  the  present 
powers  of  agriculture,  could  not  grow  on  its 
cultivable  area  all  the  food  and  most  of  the 
raw  materials  derived  from  agriculture  which 
I  are  required  for  its  population,  even  if  the 
requirements  of  that  population  were  rapidly 
increased  as  they  certainly  ought  to  be.  Taking 
the  powers  of  man  over  the  land  and  over  the 
forces  of  nature — such  as  they  are  at  the  present 
day — we  can  maintain  that  two  to  three  in¬ 
habitants  to  each  cultivable  acre  of  land  would 
not  yet  be  too  much.  But  neither  in  this 
densely  populated  country  nor  in  Belgium  are 
we  yet  in  such  numbers.  In  this  country  we 
have,  roughly  speaking,  one  acre  of  the  culti¬ 
vable  area  per  inhabitant. 

Supposing,  then,  that  each  inhabitant  of 
Great  Britain  were  compelled  to  live  on  the 
produce  of  his  own  land,  all  he  would  have  to 
do  would  be,  first,  to  consider  the  land  of  this 
country  as  a  common  inheritance,  which  must 
be  disposed  of  to  the  best  advantage  of  each 
and  all— this  is,  evidently,  an  absolutely  neces¬ 
sary  condition.  And  next,  he  would  have  to 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


235 


cultivate  his  soil,  not  in  some  extravagant  way, 
but  no  better  than  land  is  already  cultivated 
upon  thousands  and  thousands  of  acres  in 
Europe  and  America.  He  would  not  be  bound 
to  invent  some  new  methods,  but  could  simply 
generalise  and  widely  apply  those  which  have 
stood  the  test  of  experience.  He  can  do  it ; 
and  in  so  doing  he  would  save  an  immense 
quantity  of  the  work  which  is  now  given  for 
buying  his  food  abroad,  and  for  paying  all  the 
intermediaries  who  live  upon  this  trade.  Under 
a  rational  culture,  those  necessaries  and  those 
luxuries  which  must  be  obtained  from  the 
soil,  undoubtedly  can  be  obtained  with  much 
less  work  than  is  required  now  for  buying  these 
commodities  A  I  have  made  elsewhere  (in  The 
Conquest  of  Bread)  approximate  calculations  to 
that  effect,  but  with  the  data  given  in  this 
book  everyone  can  himself  easily  test  the  truth 
of  this  assertion.  If  we  take,  indeed,  the 
masses  of  produce  which  are  obtained  under 
rational  culture,  and  compare  them  with  the 
amount  of  labour  which  must  be  spent  for 
obtaining  them  under  an  irrational  culture,  for 
collecting  them  abroad,  for  transporting  them, 
and  for  keeping  armies  of  middlemen,  we  see 
at  once  how  few  days  and  hours  need  be  given, 
under  proper  culture,  for  growing  man’s  food. 

For  improving  our  methods  of  culture  to 


236 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


,r  that  extent,  we  surely  need  not  divide  the  land 
\  into  one-acre  plots,  and  attempt  to  grow  what 
Vwe  are  in  need  of  by  everyone’s  separate  in- 
/  dividual  exertions,  on  everyone’s  separate  plot 
i  with  no  better  tools  than  the  spade  ;  under 
/  such  conditions  we  inevitably  should  fail.  Those 
\who  have  been  so  much  struck  with  the  won¬ 
derful  results  obtained  in  the  petite  culture , 
that  they  go  about  representing  the  small 
culture  of  the  French  peasant,  or  maraicher,  as 
an  ideal  for  mankind,  are  evidently  mistaken. 
They  are  as  much  mistaken  as  those  other 
extremists  who  would  like  to  turn  every  country 
into  a  small  number  of  huge  Bonanza  farms, 
worked  by  militarily  organised  “  labour  bat¬ 
talions.”  In  Bonanza  farms  human  labour  is 
certainly  reduced,  but  the  crops  taken  from 
the  soil  are  far  too  small,  and  the  whole  system 
is  robbery-culture,  taking  no  heed  of  the  ex¬ 
haustion  of  the  soil.  This  is  why  the  Bonanza 
farms  have  disappeared  from  their  former 
home,  Ohio  ;  and  when  I  crossed  part  of  this 
State  in  1901  I  saw  its  plains  thickly  dotted  with 
medium-sized  farms,  from  100  to  200  acres, 
and  with  windmills  pumping  water  for  the 
orchards  and  the  vegetable  gardens.  On  the 
other  side,  in  the  spade  culture,  on  isolated 
small  plots,  by  isolated  men  or  families,  too 
much  human  labour  is  wasted,  even  though  the 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


237 


crops  are  heavy  ;  so  that  real  economy — of  both 
space  and  labour — requires  different  methods, 
representing  a  combination  of  machinery  work 
with  hand  work. 

In  agriculture,  as  in  everything  else,  asso¬ 
ciated  labour  is  the  only  reasonable  solution.  y 
Two  hundred  families  of  five  persons  each, 
owning  five  acres  per  family,  having  no  common 
ties  between  the  families,  and  compelled  to  find 
their  living,  each  family  on  its  five  acres,  almost 
certainly  would  be  an  economical  failure.  Even 
leaving  aside  all  'personal  difficulties  resulting 
from  different  education  and  tastes  and  from 
the  want  of  knowledge  as  to  what  has  to  be 
done  with  the  land,  and  admitting  for  the 
sake  of  argument  that  these  causes  do  not  inter¬ 
fere,  the  experiment  would  end  in  a  failure, 
merely  for  economical,  for  agricultural  reasons. 
Whatever  improvement  upon  the  present  con¬ 
ditions  such  an  organisation  might  be,  that 
improvement  would  not  last ;  it  would  have 
to  undergo  a  further  transformation  or  dis¬ 
appear. 

But  the  same  two  hundred  families,  if  they 
consider  themselves,  say,  as  tenants  of  the 
nation,  and  treat  the  thousand  acres  as  a 
common  tenancy — again  leaving  aside  the 
personal  conditions — would  have,  economically 
speaking,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  agri- 


238 


THE  POSSIBILITIES 


culturist,  every  chance  of  succeeding,  if  they 
know  what  is  the  best  use  to  make  of  that  land. 

^  In  such  case  they  probably  would  first  of  all 
associate  for  permanently  improving  the  land 
which  is  in  need  of  immediate  improvement,  and 
would  consider  it  necessary  to  improve  more 
of  it  every  year,  until  they  had  brought  it  all 
into  a  perfect  condition.  On  an  area  of  340 
acres  they  could  most  easily  grow  all  the  cereals 
— wheat,  oats,  etc. — required  for  both  the 
thousand  inhabitants  and  their  live  stock, 
without  resorting  for  that  purpose  to  replanted 
or  planted  cereals.  They  could  grow  on  400 
acres,  properly  cultivated,  and  irrigated  if  neces¬ 
sary  and  possible,  all  the  green  crops  and  fodder 
required  to  keep  the  thirty  to  forty  milch  cows 
which  would  supply  them  with  milk  and  butter, 
and,  let  us  say,  the  300  head  of  cattle  required 
to  supply  them  with  meat.  On  twenty  acres, 
two  of  which  would  be  under  glass,  they  would 
grow  more  vegetables,  fruit  and  luxuries  than 
they  could  consume.  And  supposing  that  half 
an  acre  of  land  is  attached  to  each  house  for 
hobbies  and  amusement  (poultry  keeping,  or 
any  fancy  culture,  flowers,  and  the  like) — 
they  would  still  have  some  140  acres  for  all 
sorts  of  purposes :  public  gardens,  squares, 
manufactures  and  so  on.  The  labour  that 
would  be  required  for  such  an  intensive  culture 


OF  AGRICULTURE. 


239 


would  not  be  the  hard  labour  of  the  serf  or 
slave.  It  would  be  accessible  to  everyone, 
strong  or  weak,  town  bred  or  country  born  ; 
it  would  also  have  many  charms  besides.  And 
its  total  amount  would  be  far  smaller  than  the 
amount  of  labour  which  every  thousand  persons, 
taken  from  this  or  from  any  other  nation,  have 
now  to  spend  in  getting  their  present  food, 
much  smaller  in  quantity  and  of  worse  quality. 
I  mean,  of  course,  the  technically  necessary 
labour,  without  even  considering  the  labour 
which  we  now  have  to  give  in  order  to  maintain 
all  our  middlemen,  armies,  and  the  like.  The 
amount  of  labour  required  to  grow  food  under 
a  rational  culture  is  so  small,  indeed,  that  our 
hypothetical  inhabitants'  would  be  led  neces¬ 
sarily  to  employ  their  leisure  in  manufacturing, 
artistic,  scientific,  and  other  pursuits. 

From  the  technical  point  of  view  there  is  no 
obstacle  whatever  for  such  an  organisation  being 
started  to-morrow  with  full  success.  The  ob¬ 
stacles  against  it  are  not  in  the  imperfection 
of  the  agricultural  art,  or  in  the  infertility  of 
the  soil,  or  in  climate.  They  are  entirely  in 
our  institutions,  in  our  inheritances  and  sur¬ 
vivals  from  the  past — in  the  “  Ghosts  ”  which 
oppress  us.  But  to  some  extent  they  lie  also — 
taking  society  as  a  whole — in  our  phenomenal 
<  ignorance.  We,  civilised  men  and  women, 


240  POSSIBILITIES  OF  AGRICULTURE. 


know  everything,  we  have  settled  opinions  upon 
everything,  we  take  an  interest  in  everything. 
We  only  know  nothing  about  whence  the  bread 
comes  which  we  eat — even  though  we  pretend 
to  know  something  about  that  subject  as  well 
— we  do  not  know  how  it  is  grown,  what  pains 
it  costs  to  those  who  grow  it,  what  is  being 
done  to  reduce  their  pains,  what  sort  of  men 
those  feeders  of  our  grand  selves  are  ...  we 
are  more  ignorant  than  savages  in  this  respect, 
and  we  prevent  our  children  from  obtaining 
this  sort  of  knowledge — even  those  of  our 
children  who  would  prefer  it  to  the  heaps  of 
useless  stuff  with  which  they  are  crammed  at 
school. 


\ 


CHAPTER  VI. 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND  INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 

Industry  and  agriculture — The  small  industries — Different  types 
— Petty  trades  in  Great  Britain:  Sheffield,  Leeds,  Lake  Dis¬ 
trict,  Birmingham  —  Statistical  data  —  Petty  trades  in 
France  :  Weaving  and  various  other  trades — The  Lyons 
region — Paris,  emporium  of  petty  trades — Results  of  the 
census  of  1896. 


HE  two  sister  arts  of  agriculture  and  in¬ 


dustry  were  not  always  so  estranged  from 


one  another  as  they  are  now.  There  was  a  time,'\ 
and  that  time  is  not  so  far  back,  when  both  \ 
were  thoroughly  combined  ;  the  villages  were 
then  the  seats  of  a  variety  of  industries,  and  the 
artisans  in  the  cities  did  not  abandon  agricul¬ 
ture  ;  many  towns  were  nothing  else  but  in¬ 
dustrial  villages.  If  the  mediaeval  city  was  the 
cradle  of  those  industries  which  bordered  upon 
art  and  were  intended  to  supply  the  wants  of  the 
richer  classes,  still  it  was  the  rural  manufacture 
which  supplied  the  wants  of  the  million,  as  it 
does  until  the  present  day  in  Russia,  and  to  a 
very  great  extent  in  Germany  and  France. 
But  then  camo  the  water-motors,  steam,  the 


t 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


242 


development  of  machinery,  and  they  broke  the 
link  which  formerly  connected  the  farm  with  the 
workshop.  Factories  grew  up  and  they  aban¬ 
doned  the  fields.  They  gathered  where  the  sale 
of  their  produce  was  easiest,  or  the  raw  materials 
and  fuel  could  be  obtained  with  the  greatest 
advantage.  New  cities  rose,  and  the  old  ones 
rapidly  enlarged  ;  the  fields  were  deserted. 
Millions  of  labourers,  driven  away  by  sheer  force 
from  the  land,  gathered  in  the  cities  in  search  of 
labour,  and  soon  forgot  the  bonds  which  formerly 
attached  them  to  the  soil.  And  we,  in  our  ad¬ 
miration  of  the  prodigies  achieved  under  the 
V  new  factory  system,  overlooked  the  advantages  • 
^/of  the  old  system  under  which  the  tiller  of  the 
soil  was  an  industrial  worker  at  the  same  time. 
We  doomed  to  disappearance  all  those  branches 
of  industry  which  formerly  used  to  prosper  in 
the  villages  ;  we  condemned  in  industry  all  that 
was  not  a  big  factory. 

True,  the  results  were  grand  as  regards  the 
^increase  of  the  productive  powers  of  man.  But 
jLey  proved  terrible  as  regards  the  millions  of 
/human  beings  who  were  plunged  into  misery 
I  and  had  to  rely  upon  precarious  means  of  living 
I  in  our  cities.  Moreover,  the  system,  as  a  whole, 
brought  about  those  abnormal  conditions  which 
T  have  endeavoured  to  sketch  in  the  two  first 


-ers.  We  were  thus  driven  into  a  corner  ; 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  243 

and  while  a  thorough  change  in  the  present 
relations  between  labour  and  capital  is  becoming 
an  imperious  necessity,  a  thorough  remodelling 
of  the  whole  of  our  industrial  organisation  has  also 
become  unavoidable.  The  industrial  nations  are 
bound  to  reyert  to  agriculture,  they  are  com¬ 
pelled  to  find  out  the  best  means  of  combining  it 
with  industry,  and  they  must  do  so  without  loss 
of  time. 

To  examine  the  special  question  as  to  the 
possibility  of  such  a  combination  is  the  aim  of  the 
following  pages.  Is  it  possible,  from  a  technical 
point  of  view  ?  Is  it  desirable  ?  Are  there,  in 
our  present  industrial  life,  such  features  as  might 
lead  us  to  presume  that  a  change  in  the  above 
direction  would  find  the  necessary  elements  for 
its  accomplishment  ?  Such  are  the  questions 
which  rise  before  the  mind.  And  to  answer  them, 
there  is,  I  suppose,  no  better  means  than  to  study 
that  immense  but  overlooked  and  underrated 
branch  of  industries  which  are  described  under 
the  names  of  rural  industries,  domestic  trades, 
and  petty  traded  :  to  study  them,  not  in  the 
works  of  the  economists  who  are  too  much 
inclined  to  consider  them  as  obsolete  types 
of  industry,  but  in  their  life  itself,  in  their 
struggles,  their  failures  and  achievements. 

The  variety  of  forms  of  organisation  which  is 


244 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


found  in  the  small  industries  is  hardly  suspected 
by  those  who  have  not  made  them  a  subject  of 
special  study.  There  are,  first,  two  broad  cate- 
^/gories  :  those  industries  which  are  carried  on  in 
the  villages,  in  connection  with  agriculture  ;  and 
those  which  are  carried  on  in  towns  or  in  villages, 
with  no  connection  with  the  land — the  workers 
depending  for  their  earnings  exclusively  upon 
their  industrial  work. 

In  Russia,  in  France,  in  Germany,  in  Austria, 
and  so  on,  millions  and  millions  of  workers  are  in 
the  first  case.  They  are  owners  or  occupiers  of 
the  land,  they  keep  one  or  two  cows,  very  often 
horses,  and  they  cultivate  their  fields,  or  their 
orchards,  or  gardens,  considering  industrial 
work  as  a  by-occupation.  In  those  regions, 
especially,  where  the  winter  is  long  and  no  work 
on  the  land  is  possible  for  several  months  every 
if  year,  this  form  of  small  industries  is  widely 
l  spread.  In  this  country,  on  the  contrary,  we  find 
\the  opposite  extreme.  Few  small  industries 
have  survived  in  England  in  connection  with 
land-culture  ;  but  hundreds  oh  petty  trades  are 
found  in  the  suburbs  and  the  slums  of  the  great 
cities,  and  large  portions  of  the  populations  of 
several  towns,  such  as  Sheffield  and  Birmingham, 
find %  their  living  in  a  variety  of  petty  trades. 
Between  these  two  extremes  there  is  evidently  a 
mass  of  intermediate  forms,  according  to  the 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  245 

more  or  less  close  ties  which  continue  to  exist 
with  the  land.  Large  villages,  and  even  towns, 
are  thus  peopled  with  workers  who  are  engaged 
in  small  trades,  but  most  of  whom  have  a  small 
garden,  or  an  orchard,  or  a  field,  or  only  retain 
some  rights  of  pasture  on  the  commons,  while 
part  of  them  five  exclusively  upon  their  indus¬ 
trial  earnings. 

With  regard  to  the  sale  of  the  produce,  the 
small  industries  offer  the  same  variety  of  organi¬ 
sation.  Here  again  there  are  two  great  branches. 
In  one  of  them  the  worker  sells  his  produce 
directly  to  the  wholesale  dealer ;  cabinet-makers, 
weavers,  and  workers  in  the  toy  trade  are  in 
this  case.  In  the  other  great  division  the  worker 
works  for  a  44  master  ”  who  either  sells  the 
produce  to  a  wholesale  dealer,  or  simply  acts  as 
a  middleman  who  himself  receives  his  orders 
from  some  big  concern.  This  is  the  “  sweating 
system,”  properly  speaking,  under  which  we  find 
a  mass  of  small  trades.  Part  of  the  toy  trade, 
the  tailors  who  work  for  large  clothing  establish¬ 
ments — very  often  for  those  of  the  State — the 
women  who  sew  and  embroider  the  “  uppers  ” 
for  the  boot  and  shoe  factories,  and  who  as  often 
deal  with  the  factory  as  with  an  intermediary 
44  sweater,”  and  so  on,  are  in  this  case.  All 
possible  gradations  of  feudalisation  and  sub- 
feudalisation  of  labour  are  evidently  found  in 


246  SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 

that  organisation  of  the  sale  of  the  pro¬ 
duce. 

Again,  when  the  industrial,  or  rather  technical 
aspects  of  the  small  industries  are  considered, 
the  same  variety  of  types  is  soon  discovered. 
Here  also  there  are  two  great  branches  :  those 
trades,  on  the  one  side,  which  are  purely  domestic 
— that  is,  those  which  are  carried  on  in  the  house 
of  the  worker,  with  the  aid  of  his  family,  or  of 
a  couple  of  wage-workers  ;  and  those  which  are 
carried  on  in  separate  workshops — all  the  just- 
mentioned  varieties,  as  regards  connection  with 
land  and  the  divers  modes  of  disposing  of  the 
produce,  being  met  with  in  both  these  branches. 
All  possible  trades — weaving,  workers  in  wood, 
in  metals,  in  bone,  in  india-rubber,  and  so  on — 
may  be  found  under  the  category  of  purely 
domestic  trades,  with  all  possible  gradations 
between  the  purely  domestic  form  of  production 
and  the  workshop  and  the  factory. 

Thus,  by  the  side  of  the  trades  which  are 
carried  on  entirely  at  home  by  one  or  more 
members  of  the  family,  there  are  the  trades  in 
which  the  master  keeps  a  small  workshop  at¬ 
tached  to  his  house  and  works  in  it  with  his 
family,  or  with  a  few  “  assistants” — that  is,  wage¬ 
workers,  Or  else  the  artisan  has  a  separate 
workshop,  supplied  with  wheel-power,  as  is  the 
case  with  the  Sheffield  cutlers.  Or  several 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  247 

workers  come  together  in  a  small  factory  which 
they  maintain  themselves,  or  hire  in  association, 
or  where  they  are  allowed  to  work  for  a  certain 
weekly  rent.  And  in  each  of  these  cases  they 
work  either  directly  for  the  dealer  or  for  a  small 
master,  or  for  a  middleman. 

A  further  development  of  this  system  is  the 
big  factory,  especially  of  ready-made  clothes,  in 
which  hundreds  of  women  pay  so  much  for  the 
sewing-machine,  the  gas,  the  gas-heated  irons, 
and  so  on,  and  are  paid  themselves  so  much  for 
each  piece  of  the  ready-made  clothes  they  sew, 
or  each  part  of  it.  Immense  factories  of  this 
kind  exist  in  England,  and  it  appeared  from 
testimony  given  before  the  “  Sweating  Com¬ 
mittee  ”  that  women  are  fearfully  “  sweated  ” 
in  such  workshops — the  full  price  of  each  slightly 
spoiled  piece  of  clothing  being  deducted  from 
their  very  low  piecework  wages. 

And,  finally,  there  is  the  small  workshop 
(often  with  hired  wheel-power)  in  which  a  master 
employs  three  to  ten  workers,  who  are  paid  in 
wages,  and  sells  his  produce  to  a  bigger  employer 
or  merchant — there  being  all  possible  gradations 
between  such  a  workshop  and  the  small  factory 
in  which  a  few  time  workers  (five,  ten  to  twenty) 
are  employed  by  an  independent  producer.  In 
the  textile  trades,  weaving  is  often  done  either 
by  the  family  or  by  a  master  who  employs  one 


248 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


boy  only,  or  several  weavers,  and  after  having 
received  the  yarn  from  a  big  employer,  pays  a 
skilled  workman  to  put  the  yarn  in  the  loom, 
invents  what  is  necessary  for  weaving  a  given, 
sometimes  very  complicated  pattern,  and  after 
having  woven  the  cloth  or  the  ribbons  in  his 
own  loom  or  in  a  loom  which  he  hires  himself,  he 
is  paid  for  the  piece  of  cloth  according  to  a  very 
complicated  scale  of  wages  agreed  to  between 
masters  and  workers.  This  last  form,  we  shall 
see  presently,  is  widely  spread  up  to  the  present 
day,  especially  in  the  woollen  and  silk  trades  ; 
it  continues  to  exist  by  the  side  of  big  factories 
in  which  50,  100,  or  5,000  wage-workers,  as  the 
case  may  be,  are  working  with  the  employers’ 
machinery  and  are  paid  in  time-wages  so  much 
the  day  or  the  week. 

,  The  small  industries  are  thus  quite  a  world,* 
which,  remarkable  enough,  continues  to  exist 
even  in  the  most  industrial  countries,  side  by 
'side  with  the  big  factories.  Into  this  world  we 
must  now  penetrate  to  cast  a  glimpse  upon  it : 
a  glimpse  only,  because  it  would  take  volumes 
to  describe  its  infinite  variety  of  pursuits  and 

*  This  is  why  the  German  economists  find  such  difficulties 
in  delimiting  the  proper  domain  of  the  domestic  trades 
( Hausinduslrie ),  and  now  identify  this  word  with  V erlagssysfem, 
which  means  “  working  either  directly  or  through  the  inter¬ 
mediary  of  a  middleman  employer  (or  buyer)  for  a  dealer  or 
employer,  who  pays  the  small  producer  for  the  goods  he  has 
produced,  before  they  have  reached  the  consumer.” 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


249 


organisation,  and  its  infinitely  varied  connection, 
with  agriculture  as  well  as  with  other  industries. 


Most  of  the  petty  trades,  except  some  of  those 
which  are  connected  ‘  with  agriculture,  are,  we 
must  admit,  in  a  very  precarious  position.  The 
earnings  are  very  low,  and  the  employment  is 
often  uncertain.  The  day  of  labour  is  by  two, 
three,  or  four  hours  longer  than  it  is  in  well- 
organised  factories,  and  at  certain  seasons  it 
reaches  an  almost  incredible  length.  The  crises 
are  frequent  and  last  for  years.  Altogether,  the 
worker  is  much  more  at  the  mercy  of  the  dealer 
or  the  employer,  and  the  employer  is  at  the  mercy 
of  the  wholesale  dealer.  Both  are  liable  to 
become  enslaved  to  the  latter,  running  into  debt 
to  him.  In  some  of  the  petty  trades,  especially 
in  the  fabrication  of  the  plain  textiles,  the  workers 
are  in  dreadful  misery.  But  those  who  pretend 
that  such  misery  is  the  rule  are  totally  wrong. 
Anyone  who  has  lived  among,  let  us  say,  the 
watch-makers  in  Switzerland  and  knows  their 
inner  family  life,  will  recognise  that  the  condition 
of  these  workers  was  out  of  all  comparison 
superior,  in  every  respect,  material  and  moral, 
to  the  conditions  of  millions  of  factory  hands. 
Even  during  such  a  crisis  in  the  watch  trade  as 
was  lived  through  in  1876-1880,  their  condition 
was  preferable  to  the  condition  of  factory  hands 


250 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


during  a  crisis  in  the  woollen  or  cotton  trade  ; 
and  the  workers  perfectly  well  knew  it  them¬ 
selves. 

Whenever  a  crisis  breaks  out  in  some  branch 
of  the  petty  trades,  there  is  no  lack  of  writers  to 
predict  that  that  trade  is  going  to  disappear. 
During  the  crisis  which  I  witnessed  in  1877, 
living  amidst  the  Swiss  watchmakers,  the  im¬ 
possibility  of  a  recovery  of  the  trade  in  the  face 
of  the  competition  of  machine-made  watches  was 
a  current  topic  in  the  press.  The  same  was  said 
in  1882  with  regard  to  the  silk  trade  of  Lyons, 
and,  in  fact,  wherever  a  crisis  has  broken  out  in 
the  petty  trades.  And  yet,  notwithstanding  the 
gloomy  predictions,  and  the  still  gloomier  pros¬ 
pects  of  the  workers,  that  form  of  industry  does 
not  disappear.  Even  when  some  branch  of  it 
disappears,  there  always  remains  something 
of  it ;  some  portions  of  it  continue  to  exist  as 
small  industries  (watchmaking  of  a  high  quality, 
best  sorts  of  silks,  high  quality  velvets,  etc.), 
or  new  connected  branches  grow  up  instead  of 
the  old  ones,  or  the  small  industry,  taking 
advantage  of  a  mechanical  motor,  assumes  a 
new  form.  We  thus  find  it  endowed  with 
an  astonishing  vitality.  It  undergoes  various 
modifications,  it  adapts  itself  to  new  conditions, 
it  struggles  without  losing  hope  of  better  times 
to  come.  Anyhow,  it  has  not  the  characteristics 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


251 


of  a  decaying  institution.  In  some  industries 
the  factory  is  undoubtedly  victorious  ;  but  there 
are  other  branches  in  which  the  petty  trades 
hold  their  own  position.  Even  in  the  textile 
industries — especially  in  consequence  of  the  wide 
use  of  the  labour  of  children  and  women — which 
offer  so  many  advantages  for  the  factory  system, 
the  hand-loom  still  competes  with  the  power- 
loom. 

As  a  whole,  the  transformation  of  the  petty 
trades  into  great  industries  goes  on  with  a  slow¬ 
ness  which  cannot  fail  to  astonish  even  those 
who  are  convinced  of  its  necessity.  Nay,  some¬ 
times  we  may  even  see  the  reverse  movement 
going  on — occasionally,  of  course,  and  only  for 
a  time.  I  cannot  forget  my  amazement  when 
I  saw  at  Verviers,  some  thirty  years  ago,  that 
most  of  the  woollen  cloth  factories — immense 
barracks  facing  the  streets  by  more  than  a 
hundred  windows  each — were  silent,  and  their 
costly  machinery  was  rusting,  while  cloth  was 
woven  in  hand-looms  in  the  weavers’  houses, 
for  the  owners  of  those  very  same  factories. 
Here  we  have,  of  course,  but  a  temporary  fact, 
fully  explained  by  the  spasmodic  character  of 
the  trade  and  the  heavy  losses  sustained  by  the 
owners  of  the  factories  when  they  cannot  run 
their  mills  all  the  year  round.  Rut  it  illustrates 
the  obstacles  which  the  transformation  has  to 


252 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 

comply  with.  As  to  the  silk  trade,  it  continues 
to  spread  over  Europe  in  its  rural  industry 
shape  ;  while  hundreds  of  new  petty  trades 
appear  every  year,  and  when  they  find  nobody 
to  carry  them  on  in  the  villages — as  is  the  case 
in  this  country — they  shelter  themselves  in  the 
suburbs  of  the  great  cities,  as  we  have  lately 
learned  from  the  inquiry  into  the  “  sweating 
system.” 

;  Now,  the  advantages  offered  by  a  large  factory 
jin  comparison  with  hand  work  are  self-evident 
ks  regards  the  economy  of  labour,  and  especially 
I — this  is  the  main  point — the  facilities  both  for 
sale  and  for  having  the  raw  produce  at  a  lower 
price.  How  can  we  then  explain  the  persistence 
of  the  petty  trades  ?  Many  causes,  however, 
most  of  which  cannot  be  valued  in  shillings  and 
pence,  are  at  work  in  favour  of  the  petty  trades, 
and  these  causes  will  be  best  seen  from  the 
following  illustrations.  I  must  say,  however, 
that  even  a  brief  sketch  of  the  countless  industries 
which  are  carried  on  on  a  small  scale  in  this 
country,  and  on  the  Continent,  would  be  far 
beyond  the  scope  of  this  chapter.  When  I  began 
to  study  the  subject  some  thirty  years  ago,  I 
never  guessed,  from  the  little  attention  devoted 
to  it  by  the  orthodox  economists,  what  a  wide, 
complex,  important,  and  interesting  organisation 
would  appear  at  the  end  of  a  closer  inquiry.  So 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


253 


I  see  myself  compelled  to  give  here  only  a  few 
typical  illustrations,  and  to  indicate  the  chief 
lines  only  of  the  subject. 

The  Small  Industries  in  the  United  Kingdom. 

We  have  not  for  the  United  Kingdom  such 
statistical  data  as  are  obtained  in  France  and 
Germany  by  periodical  censuses  of  all  the  factories 
and  workshops,  and  the  numbers  of  the  work¬ 
people,  foremen  and  clerks,  employed  on  a  given 
day  in  each  industrial  and  commercial  establish¬ 
ment.  Consequently,  up  to  the  present  time 
all  the  statements  made  by  economists  about 
the  so-called  “  concentration  ”  of  the  industry  in 
this  country,  and  the  consequent  “  unavoidable  ” 
disappearance  of  the  small’ industries,  have  been 
based  on  mere  impressions  of  the  writers, — not 
on  statistical  data.  Up  till  now  we  cannot  give, 
as  it  is  done  further  in  these  pages  for  France 
and  Germany,  the  exact  numbers  of  factories 
and  workshops  employing,  let  us  say,  from  1,000 
to  2,000  persons,  from  500  to  1,000,  from  50  to 
500,  less  than  50,  and  so  on.  It  is  only  since 
factory  inspection  has  been  introduced  by  the 
Factory  Act  of  1895  that  we  begin  to  find,  in 
the  Reports  published  since  1900  by  the  Factory 
Inspectors  ( Annual  Report  of  the  Chief  Inspector 
of  Factories  and  Workshops  for  the  year  1898: 


254 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


London,  1900),  information  which  permits  us  to 
get  a  general  idea  about  the  distribution  of 
working  men  in  factories  of  different  sizes,  and 
the  extension  that  the  petty  trades  have  retained 
in  this  country  up  till  now.*  One  may  see  it 
already  from  the  following  little  table  for  the 
year  1897,  which  I  take  from  the  just-mentioned 
Report.  These  figures  are  not  yet  complete, 
especially  as  regards  the  workshops,  but  they 
contain  already  the  greater  part  of  the  English 
industries. 


1897. 

Number  of 
factories  and 
workshops. 

Number  of 
operatives 
of  both  sexes. 

Average 
number  of 
operatives  per 
establishment. 

Textile  factories  .  . 

10,883 

1,051,564 

97 

Non-textile  factories 

79,059 

2,755,460 

35 

Various  workshops  . 

88,814 

676,776 

8 

Total  .  ,  , 

178,756 

4,483,800 

25 

Let  me  remark  that  the  Factory  Inspectors 
consider  as  a  workshop  every  industrial  establish¬ 
ment  which  has  no  mechanical  motive  power, 
and  as  a  factory  every  establishment  provided 
with  steam,  gas,  water,  or  electric  power. 

These  figures,  however,  are  not  complete, 
because  only  those  workshops  are  included  where 

*  For  more  details  about  this  subject,  see  an  article  of  mine 
in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  August,  1900. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  255 

women  and  children  are  employed,  as  also  all  the 
bakeries.  The  others  were  not  submitted  to 
inspection  at  the  time  when  this  table  was 
compiled.  There  is,  nevertheless,  a  means  to 
find  out  the  approximate  numbers  of  workpeople 
employed  in  the  workshops.  The  number  of 
women  and  female  children  employed  in  the 
workshops  in  1897  was  356,098,  and  the  number 
of  men  and  boys  was  320,678.  But,  as  the  pro¬ 
portion  of  male  workers  to  the  female  in  all 
the  factories  was  2,654,716  males  to  1,152,308 
females,  we  may  admit  that  the  same  proportion 
prevails  in  the  workshops.  This  would  give 
for  the  latter  something  like  820,000  male 
workers,  and  1,176,000  persons  of  both  sexes, 
employed  in  147,000  workshops.  At  the  same 
time,  the  grand  total  of  persons  employed 
in  industry  (exclusive  of  mining)  would  be 
4,983,000. 

We  can  thus  say  that  nearly  one-fourth  (24  per 
cent.)  of  all  the  industrial  workers  of  this  country 
are  working  in  workshops  having  less  than  eight  to 
ten  workers  per  establishment* 

*  The  Chief  Inspector,  Mr.  Whitelegge,  wrote  to  me  in  1900 
that  the  workshops  which  did  not  enter  into  his  reports 
represented  about  one-half  of  all  the  workshops.  Since  that 
time  Mr.  Whitelegge  has  continued  to  publish  his  interesting 
reports,  adding  to  them  new  groups  of  workshops.  However, 
they  still  remain  incomplete  to  some  extent  as  regards  this  last 
point.  In  the  last  Report,  published  in  1911,  we  see  that 
147,000  workshops  were  registered  at  the  end  of  1907,  and 


256 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


It  must  also  be  pointed  out  that  out  of  the 
4,483,800  workpeople  registered  in  the  above- 
mentioned  tables  nearly  60,000  were  children 
who  were  working  half-days  only,  401,000  were 
girls  less  than  eighteen  years  old,  463,000  were 
boys  from  thirteen  to  eighteen  who  were  making 
full  working  days  like  the  adults,  and  1,077,115 
were  considered  as  women  (more  than  eighteen 
years  old).  In  other  words,  one-fifth  part  of  all 
the  industrial  workers  of  this  country  were  girls 
and  boys,  and  more  than  two-fifths  (41  per  cent.) 
were  either  women  or  children.  All  the  industrial 
production  of  the  United  Kingdom,  with  its  im¬ 
mense  exports,  was  thus  giving  work  to  less  than 
three  million  adult  men — 2,983,000  out  of  a  popu¬ 
lation  of  42,000,000,  to  whom  we  must  add 
972,200  persons  working  in  the  mines.  As  to  the 
textile  industry,  which  supplies  almost  one-half 
of  the  English  exports,  there  are  less  than  300,000 
adult  men  who  find  employment  in  it.  The 
remainder  is  the  work  of  children,  boys,  girls, 
and  women. 

A  fact  which  strikes  us  is  that  the  1,051,564 

returns  were  received  from  105,000  of  them.  But  as  in  32,000 
workshops  no  women  or  young  persons  (below  18)  were  em¬ 
ployed,  their  returns  were  not  published.  The  Ileport  for 
1907  gives,  therefore,  only  91,249  workshops  in  which  638,335 
I  persons  were  employed  (186,064  male  and  282,324  female 
adults,  54,605  male  and  113,728  female  young  persons — that  is, 
full-timers  from  14  to  18  years  old — and  863  male  and  751 
female  children  under  14). 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  257 

workpeople — men,  women  and  children — who 
worked  in  1897  in  the  textile  industries  of  the 
United  Kingdom  were  distributed  over  10,883 
factories,  which  gives  only  an  average  of  ninety- 
three  persons  per  factory  in  all  this  great  industry, 
notwithstanding  the  fact  that  “  concentration  55 
has  progressed  most  in  this  industry,  and  that 
we  find  in  it  factories  employing  as  many  as 
5,000  and  6,000  persons. 

It  is  true  that  the  Factory  Inspectors  represent 
each  separate  branch  of  a  given  industry  as  a 
special  establishment.  Thus,  if  an  employer  or 
a  society  owns  a  spinning  mill,  a  weaving  factory, 
and  a  special  building  for  dressing  and  finishing, 
the  three  are  represented  as  separate  factories. 
But  this  is  precisely  what  is  wanted  for  giving 
us  an  exact  idea  about  the  degree  of  con¬ 
centration  of  a  given  industry.  Besides,  it  is 
also  known  that,  for  instance,  in  the  cotton 
industry,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Manchester, 
the  spinning,  the  weaving,  the  dressing  and  so 
on  belong  very  often  to  different  employers,  who 
send  to  each  other  the  stuffs  at  different  degrees 
of  fabrication  ;  those  factories  which  combine 
under  the  same  management  all  the  three  or  four 
consecutive  phases  of  the  manufacture  are  an 
exception. 

But  it  is  especially  in  the  division  of  the  non¬ 
textile  industries  that  we  find  an  enormous  de- 

9 


258 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


velopment  of  small  factories.  The  2,755,460 
workpeople  who  are  employed  in  all  the  non¬ 
textile  branches,  with  the  exception  of  mining, 
are  scattered  in  79,059  factories,  each  of  which  has 
only  an  average  of  thirty-five  workers.  More¬ 
over,  the  Factory  Inspectors  had  on  their  lists 
676,776  workpeople  employed  in  88,814  work¬ 
shops  (without  mechanical  power),  which  makes 
an  average  of  eight  persons  only  per  workshop. 
These  last  figures  are,  however,  as  we  saw,  below 
the  real  ones,  as  another  sixty  thousand  work¬ 
shops  occupying  half  a  million  more  workpeople 
were  not  yet  tabulated. 

Such  averages  as  ninety-three  and  thirty-five 
workpeople  per  factory ,  and  eight  per  workshop , 
distributed  over  178,756  industrial  establish¬ 
ments,  destroy  already  the  legend  according  to 
which  the  big  factories  have  already  absorbed 
most  of  the  small  ones.  The  figures  show,  on 
the  contrary,  what  an  immense  number  of  small 
factories  and  workshops  resist  the  absorption  by 
the  big  factories,  and  how  they  multiply  by  the 
side  of  the  great  industry  in  various  branches, 
especially  those  of  recent  origin. 

If  we  had  for  the  United  Kingdom  full 
statistics,  giving  lists  of  all  the  factories,  with 
the  number  of  workpeople  employed  in  each 
of  them,  as  we  have  for  France  and  Germany 
(see  below),  it  would  have  been  easy  to  find  the 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


259 


exact  number  of  factories  employing  more 
than  1,000,  500,  100,  and  50  workmen.  But 
such  lists  are  issued  only  for  the  mining  in¬ 
dustry.  As  to  the  statistics  published  by  the 
Factory  Inspectors,  they  do  not  contain  such 
data,  perhaps  because  the  inspectors  have  no 
time  to  tabulate  their  figures,  or  have  not  the 
right  to  do  so.  Be  it  as  it  may,  the  Report 
of  Mr.  Whitelegge  for  1897  gives  the  number 
of  factories  (textile  and  non-textile)  and  work¬ 
shops  for  each  of  the  119  counties  of  the  United 
Kingdom  and  for  each  of  the  nearly  hundred 
sub-divisions  of  all  the  industries,  as  well  as 
the  number  of  workpeople  in  each  of  these 
more  than  10,000  sub-divisions.  So  I  was 
enabled  to  calculate  the  averages  of  persons 
employed  in  the  factories  and  workshops  for 
each  separate  branch  of  industry  in  each 
county.  Besides,  Mr.  Whitelegge  has  had  the 
kindness  to  give  me  two  very  important  figures 
— namely,  the  number  of  factories  employing 
more  than  1,000  workpeople,  and  the  number 
of  those  factories  where  less  than  ten  workers 
are  employed. 

Let  us  take,  first  of  all,  the  textile  in¬ 
dustries,  which  include  cotton,  wool,  silk,  linen, 
jute,  and  hemp,  as  well  as  machine-made 
lace  and  knitting.  Many  of  my  readers  will 


260  SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 

probably  be  astonished  to  learn  that  even  in 
the  cotton  industry  a  great  number  of  quite 
small  factories  continue  to  exist  up  to  the 
present  day.  Even  in  the  West  Riding  dis¬ 
trict,  which  is  second  only  to  Lancashire  for 
the  number  of  its  cotton  mills,  and  where  we 
find  nearly  one-third  of  all  the  workpeople  em¬ 
ployed  in  the  cotton  industry  (237,444  persons), 
the  average  for  all  the  3,210  factories  of  this 
district  is  only  seventy-three  persons  per  factory. 
And  even  in  Lancashire,  where  we  find  nearly 
one-half  of  all  the  workpeople  employed  in  the 
textiles,  these  434,609  men,  women,  and  children 
are  scattered  in  3,132  factories,  each  of  which 
has  thus  an  average  of  only  139  workers.  If 
we  remember  that  in  this  number  there  are 
factories  employing  from  2,000  to  6,000  persons, 
one  cannot  but  be  struck  by  the  quantity  of 
small  factories  employing  less  than  100  persons, 
and  which  continue  to  exist  by  the  side  of  the 
great  cotton  mills.  But  we  shall  just  see  that 
the  same  is  true  for  all  industries. 

As  to  Nottinghamshire,  which  is  a  centre 
for  machine-made  lace  and  knitting,  its  18,434 
workpeople  are,  most  of  them,  working  in 
small  factories.  The  average  for  the  386  estab¬ 
lishments  of  this  county  is  only  forty-eight 
persons  per  factory.  The  great  industry  is  thus 
very  far  from  having  absorbed  the  small  one. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  261 

The  distribution  of  the  textile  factories  in 
the  other  counties  of  the  United  Kingdom  is 
even  more  instructive.  We  learn  that  there 
are  nearly  2,000  textile  factories  in  forty- nine 
counties,  and  everyone  of  these  factories  has 
much  less  than  100  workpeople ;  while  a 
very  considerable  number  of  them  employ 
only  from  forty  to  fifty,  from  ten  to  twenty, 
and  even  less  than  ten  persons.* 

This  could  have  been  foreseen  by  everyone 
who  has  some  practical  knowledge  of  industry, 
but  it  is  overlooked  by  the  theorists,  who 
know  industry  mostly  from  books.  In  every 
country  of  the  world  there  are  by  the  side  of 
the  large  factories  a  great  number  of  small 
ones,  the  success  of  which  is  due  to  the  variety 
of  their  produce  and  the  facilities  they  offer 
to  follow  the  vagaries  of  fashion.  This  is 
especially  true  with  regard  to  the  woollens  and 
the  mixed  stuffs  made  of  wool  and  cotton. 

Besides,  it  is  well  known  to  British  manu¬ 
facturers  that  at  the  time  when  the  big  cotton 
mills  were  established,  the  manufacturers  of 

*  From  the  curve  that  I  computed  it  appears  that  all  the 
textile  factories  are  distributed  as  to  their  size  as  follows: — 
Not  less  than  500  operatives,  200  factories,  203,100  operatives ; 
from  499  to  200,  660  factories,  231,000  operatives ;  from  199 
to  100,  2,955  factories,  443,120  operatives;  from  99  to  50, 
1,380  factories,  103,500  operatives;  less  than  50,  1,410 
factories,  42,300  operatives;  total,  6,605  factories,  1,022,020 
operatives. — Nineteenth  Century,  August,  1900,  p.  262. 


262 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


spinning  and  weaving  machinery,  seeing  that 
they  had  no  more  orders  coming,  after  they 
had  supplied  this  machinery  to  the  great 
factories,  began  to  offer  it  at  a  reduced  price 
and  on  credit  to  the  small  weavers.  These 
last  associated — three,  five,  or  more  of.  them — * 
to  buy  the  machinery,  and  this  is  why  we 
have  now  in  Lancashire  quite  a  region  where  a 
great  number  of  small  cotton  mills  continue  to 
exist  till  nowadays,  without  there  being  any 
reason  to  foresee  their  disappearance.  At  times 
they  are  even  quite  prosperous. 

On  the  other  side,  when  we  examine  the 
various  branches  of  textile  industry  (cotton, 
wool,  silk,  jute,  etc.),  we  see  that  if  the  great 
factories  dominate  in  the  spinning  and  weav¬ 
ing  of  cotton,  worsted  and  flax,  as  well  as  in 
the  spinning  of  silk  (the  result  being  that  the 
average  for  these  branches  reaches  150  workers 
per  factory  for  cotton,  and  267  for  the  spinning 
of  flax),  all  other  textile  industries  belong  to  the 
domain  of  the  middle-sized  and  the  small  in¬ 
dustry.  In  other  words,  in  the  manufacture  of 
woollens,  shoddy,  hemp,  hair,  machine-made 
lace,  and  mechanical  knitting,  as  also  in  the 
weaving  of  silks,  there  are,  of  course,  large 
factories ;  but  the  majority  of  these  estab¬ 
lishments  belong  to  the  domain  of  the  small 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


263 


industry.  Thus,  for  the  3,274  woollen  factories, 
the  average  is  only  from  twenty  to  fifty  workers 
per  factory  ;  it  is  also  from  twenty-seven  to 
thirty-eight  for  shoddy,  and  thirty-seven  to 
seventy-six  for  the  other  branches.  Only  for 
knitting  do  the  averages  rise  to  ninety-three 
persons  per  factory  ;  but  we  are  just  going  to 
see  that  the  small  industry  reappears  in  this 
branch  in  force  under  the  name  of  workshops. 

All  these  important  branches  of  the  British 
textile  industry,  which  give  work  to  more  than 
240,000  men  and  women,  have  thus  remained 
up  till  now  at  the  stage  of  a  small  and  middle- 
sized  industry. 

If  we  take  now  the  jn on-textile  industries, 
we  find,  on  the  one  side,  an  immense  number 
of  small  industries  which  have  grown  up  around 
the  great  ones,  and  owing  to  them  ;  and,  on  the 
other  side,  a  large  part  of  the  fundamental 
industries  have  remained  in  the  stage  of  small 
establishments.  The  average  for  all  these 
branches,  which  give  occupation  to  three- 
fourths  of  all  the  industrial  workers  of  the 
United  Kingdom— that  is*  2,755,460  workers — 
hardly  attains,  we  saw,  thirty-live  persons  per 
factory — the  workshops  being  not  yet  included 
in  this  division.  However,  it  is  especially 
when  we  go  into  details,  and  analyse  the 
figures  which  I  have  calculated  for  each  separate 


264 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


branch,  that  we  fully  realise  the  importance  of 
the  petty  trades  in  England.  This  is  what  we 
are  going  to  do,  mentioning  first  what  belongs 
here  to  the  great  industry,  and  studying  next 
the  small  one. 

Following  the  classification  adopted  by  the 
Factory  Inspectors,  we  see  first  that  the  gas¬ 
works  belong  to  the  domain  of  the  fairly  big 
establishments  (seventy-eight  people  on  the 
average).  The  india-rubber  factories  belong  to 
the  same  category  (125  workers  on  the  average) ; 
and  amidst  the  456  glass-works  of  the  United 
Kingdom  there  must  be  some  big  ones,  as  the 
average  is  eighty-seven  workpeople. 

Next  come  mining  and  metallurgy,  which 
are  carried  on,  as  a  rule,  on  a  great  scale  ;  but 
already  in  the  iron  foundries  we  find  a 
great  number  of  establishments  belonging  to 
the  middle-sized  and  small  industry.  Thus  at 
Sheffield  I  saw  myself  several  foundries  em¬ 
ploying  only  from  five  to  six  workmen.  For 
the  making  of  huge  machinery  there  is,  of  course, 
a  number  of  very  large  works,  such  as  those 
of  Armstrong,  Whitworth,  or  those  of  the  State 
at  Woolwich.  But  it  is  very  instructive  to  see 
how  very  small  works  prosper  by  the  side  of 
big  ones  ;  they  are  numerous  enough  to  reduce 
the  average  to  seventy  workers  per  establish¬ 
ment  for  the  5,318  works  of  this  category. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


265 


Shipbuilding  and  the  manufacture  of  metallic 
tubes  evidently  belong  to  the  great  industry 
(averages,  243  and  156  persons  per  establish¬ 
ment)  ;  and  the  same  applies  to  the  two  great 
metallurgical  works  of  the  State,  which  employ 
between  them  23,455  workmen. 

Going  over  to  the  chemical  works,  we»  find 
again  a  great  industry  in  the  fabrication  of 
alkalies  and  of  matches  (only  twenty-five  works)  ; 
but,  on  the  contrary,  the  fabrication  of  soap 
and  candles,  as  well  as  manures  and  all  other 
sorts  of  chemical  produce,  which  represents 
nearly  2,000  factories,  belongs  almost  entirely 
to  the  domain  of  the  small  industry.  The 
average  is  only  twenty-nine  workpeople  per 
factory.  There  are,  of  course,  hah  a  dozen  of 
veiy  large  soap  works — one  knows  them  only 
too  well  by  their  advertisements  on  the  cliffs 
and  in  the  fields  ;  but  the  low  average  of 
twenty-nine*  workmen  proves  how  many  small 
factories  must  exist  by  the  side  of  the  soap 
kings.  The  2,500  works  engaged  in  the  fabri¬ 
cation  of  furniture,  both  in  wood  and  in 
iron,  belong  again  chiefly  to  the  small  industry. 
The  small  and  very  small  factories  swarm  by 
the  side  of  a  few  great  ones,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  thousands  of  the  still  smaller  work¬ 
shops.  The  great  storehouses  of  our  cities 
are  for  the  most  part  mere  exhibitions  of  fur- 


266  SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 

niture  made  in  very  small  factories  and  work¬ 
shops. 

In  the  fabrication  of  food  produce  we  find 
several  great  sugar,  chocolate,  and  preserves 
works  ;  but  by  their  side  we  find  also  a  very 
great  number  of  small  establishments,  which 
seem  *’not  to  complain  of  the  proximity  of  the 
big  ones,  as  they  occupy  nearly  two  -  thirds 
of  the  workers  employed  in  this  branch.  I 
do  not  speak,  of  course,  of  the  village  wind¬ 
mills,  but  one  cannot  fail  to  be  struck  by 
the  immense  number  of  small  breweries 
(2,076  breweries  have  on  the  average  only 
twenty-four  workmen  each)  and  of  the  estab¬ 
lishments  engaged  in  the  fabrication  of  aerated 
waters  (they  number  3,365,  and  have  on  the 
average  only  eleven  operatives  per  establish¬ 
ment). 

In  calico-printing  we  enter  once  more  the 
domain  of  great  factories  ;  but  by  tfieir  side  we 
find  a  pretty  large  number  of  small  ones  ;  so 
that  the  average  for  all  this  category  is  144 
workpeople  per  factory.  We  find  also  fourteen 
great  factories,  having  an  average  of  394  work¬ 
people  each,  for  dyeing  in  Turkey  red.  But 
we  find  also  by  their  side  more  than  100,000 
working-men  employed  in  2,725  small  estab¬ 
lishments  of  this  class — bleaching,  dressing, 
packing,  and  so  on — and  this  gives  us  one 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  267 

more  illustration  of  numerous  small  industries 
growing  round  the  main  ones. 

In  the  making  of  ready-made  clothing  and 
the  fabrication  of  hats,  linen,  boots  and  shoes, 
and  gloves,  we  see  the  averages  for  the  fac¬ 
tories  of  this  description  going  up  to  80,  100, 
and  150  persons  per  factory.  Rut  it  is  here 
also  that  countless  small  workshops  come  in. 
It  must  also  be  noticed  that  most  of  the  fac¬ 
tories  of  ready-made  clothing  have  their  own 
special  character.  The  factory  buys  the  cloth 
and  makes  the  cutting  by  means  of  special 
machinery  ;  but  the  sewing  is  done  by  women, 
who  come  to  work  in  the  factory.  They  pay  so 
much  the  sewing-machine,  so  much  the  motor 
power  (if  there  is  one),  so  much  the  gas,  so 
much  the  iron,  and  so  on,  and  they  are  on 
piece  work.  Very  often  this  becomes  a  “  sweat¬ 
ing  system  ”  on  a  large  scale.  Round  the  big 
factories  a  great  number  of  small  workshops 
are  centred. 

And,  finally,  we  find  great  factories  for  the 
fabrication  of  gunpowder  and  explosives  (they 
employ  less  than  12,000  workpeople),  stuff 
buttons,  and  umbrellas  (only  6,000  employees). 
But  we  find  also  in  the  table  of  workshops  that 
in  these  last  two  branches  there  are  thousands 
of  them  by  the  side  of  a  few  great  factories. 

All  taken,  Mr.  Wliitelegge  writes  to  me  that 


268 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


of  factories  employing  more  than  1,000  work¬ 
people  each,  he  finds  only  sixty -five  in  the 
textile  industries  (102,600  workpeople)  and  only 
128  (355,208  workpeople)  in  all  non-textile 

industries. 

4 

In  this  brief  enumeration  we  have  gone  over 
all  that  belongs  to  the  great  industry.  The 
remainder  belongs  almost  entirely  to  the  domain 
of  the  small,  and  often  the  very  small  in¬ 
dustry.  Such  are  all  the  factories  for  wood¬ 
work,  which  have  on  the  average  only  fifteen 
men  per  establishment,  but  represent  a  con¬ 
tingent  of  more  than  100,000  workmen  and  more 
than  6,000  employers.  The  tanneries,  the  manu¬ 
facture  of  all  sorts  of  little  things  in  ivory  and 
bone,  and  even  the  brick- works  and  the  pot¬ 
teries,  representing  a  total  of  260,000  work¬ 
people  and  11,200  employers,  belong,  with  a 
very  few  exceptions,  to  the  small  industry. 

Then  we  have  the  factories  dealing  with 
the  burnishing  and  enamelling  of  metals,  which 
also  belong  chiefly  to  the  small  industry — the 
average  being  only  twenty-eight  workpeople 
per  factory.  But  what  is  especially  striking  is 
the  development  of  the  small  and  very  small 
industry  in  the  fabrication  of  agricultural 
machinery  (thirty-two  workers  per  factory),  of 
all  sorts  of  tools  (twenty-two  on  the  average), 
needles  and  pins  (forty-three),  ironmongery, 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


269 


sanitary  apparatus,  and  various  instruments 
(twenty-five),  even  of  boilers  (forty-eight  per 
factory),  chains,  cables,  and  anchors  (in  many 
districts  this  work,  as  also  the  making  of  nails, 
is  made  by  hand  by  women). 

Needless  to  say  that  the  fabrication  of  fur¬ 
niture,  which  occupies  nearly  64,000  opera¬ 
tives,  belongs  chiefly  —  more  than  three- 
fourths  of  it — to  the  small  industry.  The 
average  for  the  1,979  factories  of  this  branch 
is  only  twenty-one  workpeople,  the  work¬ 
shops  not  being  included  in  this  number.  The 
same  is  true  of  the  factories  for  the  curing  of 
fish,  machine-made  pastry,  and  so  on,  which 
occupy  38,030  workpeople  in  more  than  2,700 
factories,  having  thus  an  average  of  fourteen 
operatives  each. 

Jewelry  and  the  manufacture  of  watches, 
photographic  apparatus,  and  all  sorts  of  luxury 
articles,  again  belong  to  the  small  and  very 
small  industry,  and  give  occupation  to  54,000 
persons. 

All  that  belongs  to  printing,  lithography, 
bookbinding,  and  stationery  again  represents 
a  vast  field  occupied  by  the  small  industry, 
which  prospers  by  the  side  of  a  small  number  of 
very  large  establishments.  More  than  120,000 
are  employed  in  these  branches  in  more  than 
6,000  factories  (workshops  not  yet  included). 


270 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


And,  finally,  we  find  a  large  domain  occupied 
by  saddlery,  brush-making,  the  making  of  sails, 
basket-making,  and  the  fabrication  of  a  thou¬ 
sand  little  things  in  leather,  paper,  wood,  metal, 
and  so  on.  This  class  is  certainly  not  insignifi¬ 
cant,  as  it  contains  more  than  4,300  employers 
and  nearly  130,000  workpeople,  employed  in 
a  mass  of  very  small  factories  by  the  side  of  a 
few  very  great  ones,  the  average  being  only 
from  twenty-five  to  thirty-five  persons  per 
factory. 

In  short,  in  the  different  non-textile  in¬ 
dustries,  the  inspectors  have  tabulated  32,04,2 
factories  employing,  each  of  them ,  less  than  ten 
workpeople. 

All  taken,  we  find  270,000  workpeople  em¬ 
ployed  in  small  factories  having  less  than  fifty 
and  even  twenty  workers  each,  the  result  being 
that  the  very  great  industry  (the  factories 
employing  more  than  1,000  workpeople  per 
factory)  and  the  very  small  one  (less  than  ten 
workers)  employ  nearly  the  same  number 
of  operatives. 

The  important  part  played  by  the  small 
industry  in  this  country  fully  appears  from 
this  rapid  sketch.  And  I  have  not  yet 
spoken  of  the  workshops.  The  Factory  In¬ 
spectors  mentioned,  as  we  saw,  in  their  first 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


271 


report,  88,814  workshops,  in  which  676,776 
workpeople  (356,098  women)  were  employed 
in  1897.  But,  as  we  have  already  seen,  these 
figures  are  incomplete.  The  number  of  work¬ 
shops  is  about  147,000,  and  there  must  be 
about  1,200,000  persons  employed  in  them 
(820,000  men  and  about  356,000  women  and 
children). 

It  is  evident  that  this  class  comprises  a  very 
considerable  number  of  bakers,  small  carpenters, 
tailors,  cobblers,  Cartwrights,  village  smiths, 
and  so  on.  But  there  is  also  in  this  class  an 
immense  number  of  workshops  belonging  to  in¬ 
dustry,  properly  speaking — that  is,  workshops 
which  manufacture  for  the  great  commercial 
market.  Some  of  these  workshops  may  of 
course  employ  fifty  persons  or  more,  but  the 
immense  majority  employ  only  from  five  to 
twenty  workpeople  each. 

We  thus  find  in  this  class  1,348  small  estab¬ 
lishments,  scattered  both  in  the  villages  and 
the  suburbs  of  great  cities,  where  nearly  14,000 
persons  make  lace,  knitting,  embroidery,  and  v 
weaving  in  hand-looms  ;  more  than  100  small 
tanneries,  more  than  20,000  Cartwrights,  and 
746  small  bicycle  makers.  In  cutlery,  in  the 
fabrication  of  tools  and  small  arms,  nails  and 
screws,  and  even  anchors  and  anchor  chains, 
we  find  again  many  thousands  of  small  work- 


272 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


shops  employing  something  like  60,000  work¬ 
men.  All  that,  let  us  remember,  without 
counting  those  workshops  which  employ  no 
women  or  children,  and  therefore  are  not 
submitted  to  the  Factory  Inspectors.  As  to 
the  fabrication  of  clothing,  which  gives  work  to 
more  than  350,000  men  and  women,  distributed 
over  nearly  45,000  workshops,  let  it  be  noted 
that  it  is  not  small  tailors  that  is  spoken 
of  here,  but  that  mass  of  workshops  which 
swarm  in  Whitechapel  and  the  suburbs  of  all 
great  cities,  and  where  we  find  from  five  to 
fifty  women  and  men  making  clothing  for  the 
tailor  shops,  big  and  small.  In  these  shops 
the  measure  is  taken,  and  sometimes  the 
cutting  is  made ;  but  the  clothing  is  sewn  in 
the  small  workshops,  which  are  very  often 
somewhere  in  the  country.  Even  parts  of  the 
commands  of  linen  and  clothing  for  the  army 
find  their  way  to  workshops  in  country  places. 
As  to  the  underclothing  and  mercery  which 
are  sold  in  the  great  stores,  they  are  fabricated 
in  small  workshops,  which  must  be  counted  by 
the  thousand. 

The  same  is  true  of  furniture,  mattresses  and 
cushions,  hats,  artificial  flowers,  umbrellas, 
slippers,  and  even  cheap  jewelry.  The  great 
shops,  even  the  largest  stores,  mostly  keep  only 
an  assortment  of  samples.  All  is  manufactured 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  273 

at  a  very  low  price,  and  day  by  day ,  in  thou¬ 
sands  of  small  workshops. 

It  can  thus  be  said  that  if  we  exclude  from 
the  class  of  workshops’  employees  100,000  or 
even  200,000  workpeople  who  do  not  work 
for  industry  properly  speaking,  and  if  we  add 
on  the  other  side  the  nearly  500,000  workers 
who  have  not  yet  been  tabulated  by  the  in¬ 
spectors  in  1897,  we  find  a  population  of  more 
than  1,000,000  men  and  women  who  belong 
entirely  to  the  domain  of  the  small  industry, 
and  so  must  be  added  to  those  whom  we 
found  working  in  the  small  factories.  The 
artisans  who  are  working  single-handed  were 
not  included  in  this  sketch. 

We  thus  see  that  even  in  this  country,  which , 
may  be  considered  as  representing  the  highest 
development  of  the  great  industry,  the  number 
of  persons  employed  in  the  small  trade  con¬ 
tinues  to  be  immense.  The  small  industries  v 
are  as  much  a  distinctive  feature  of  the  British 
industry  as  its  few  immense  factories  and, 
ironworks.  1 

Going  over  now  to  what  is  known  about  the 
small  industries  of  this  country  from  direct 
observation,  we  find  that  the  suburbs  of  London, 
Glasgow,  and  other  great  cities  swarm  with  small 
workshops,  and  that  there  are  regions  where  the 


274 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


petty  trades  are  as  developed  as  they  are  in 
Switzerland  or  in  Germany.  Sheffield  is  a  well- 
known  example  in  point.  The  Sheffield  cutlery 
— one  of  the  glories  of  England — is  not  made  by 
machinery  :  it  is  chiefly  made  by  hand.  There 
are  at  Sheffield  a  number  of  firms  which  manu¬ 
facture  cutlery  right  through  from  the  making  of 
steel  to  the  finishing  of  tools,  and  employ  wage¬ 
workers  ;  and  yet  even  these  firms — I  am  told 
by  Edward  Carpenter,  who  kindly  collected  for 
me  information  about  the  Sheffield  trade — let 
out  some  part  of  their  work  to  the  “  small 
masters.”  But  by  far  the  greatest  number  of  the 
cutlers  work  in  their  homes  with  their  relatives, 
or  in  small  workshops  supplied  with  wheel-power, 
which  they  rent  for  a  few  shillings  a  week. 
Immense  yards  are  covered  with  buildings,  which 
are  subdivided  into  numbers  of  small  workshops. 
Some  of  these  cover  but  a  few  square  yards,  and 
there  I  saw  smiths  hammering,  all  the  day  long, 
blades  of  knives  on  a  small  anvil,  close  by  the 
blaze  of  their  fires  ;  occasionally  the  smith  may 
have  one  helper,  or  two.  In  the  upper  storeys 
scores  of  small  workshops  are  supplied  with 
wheel-power,  and  in  each  of  them,  three,  four,  or 
five  workers  and  a  “  master  ”  fabricate,  with 
the  occasional  aid  of  a  fewr  plain  machines,  every 
description  of  tools  :  files,  saws,  blades  of  knives, 
razors,  and  so  on.  Grinding  and  glazing  are 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


275 


done  in  other  small  workshops,  and  even  steel 
is  cast  in  a  small  foundry,  the  working  staff  of 
which  consists  only  of  five  or  six  men. 

When  I  walked  through  these  workshops  I 
easily  imagined  myself  in  a  Russian  cutlery 
village,  like  Pavlovo  or  Vorsma.  The  Sheffield 
cutlery  has  thus  maintained  its  olden  organisa¬ 
tion,  and  the  fact  is  the  more  remarkable  as  the 
earnings  of  the  cutlers  are  low  as  a  rule  ;  but, 
even  when  they  are  reduced  to  a  few  shillings  a 
week,  the  cutler  prefers  to  vegetate  on  his  small 
earnings  than  to  enter  as  a  waged  labourer  in  a 
“  house.”  The  spirit  of  the  old  trade  organisa¬ 
tions,  which  were  so  much  spoken  of  in  the  ’sixties 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  is  thus  still  alive. 

Until  lately,  Leeds  and  its  environs  were  also 
the  seat  of  extensive  domestic  industries.  When 
Edward  Baines  wrote,  in  1857,  his  first  account  of 
the  Yorkshire  industries  (in  Th.  Baines’s  York¬ 
shire,  Past  and  Present),  most  of  the  woollen  cloth 
which  was  made  in  that  region  was  woven  by 
hand.*  Twice  a  week  the  hand-made  cloth  was 
brought  to  the  Clothiers’  Hall,  and  by  noon  it 
was  sold  to  the  merchants,  who  had  it  dressed 
in  their  factories.  Joint-stock  mills  were  run 
by  combined  clothiers  in  order  to  prepare  and 

*  Nearly  one-half  of  the  43,000  operatives  who  were  employed 
at  that  time  in  the  woollen  trade  of  this  country  were  weaving 
in  hand-looms.  So  also  one-fifth  of  the  79,000  persons  employed 
in  the  worsted  trade. 


276  SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 

/ 

spin  the  wool,  but  it  was  woven  in  the  hand-looms 
by  the  clothiers  and  the  members  of  their  families. 
Twelve  years  later  the  hand-loom  was  superseded 
to  a  great  extent  by  the  power-loom  ;  but  the 
clothiers,  who  were  anxious  to  maintain  their  in¬ 
dependence,  resorted  to  a  peculiar  organisation  : 
they  rented  a  room,  or  part  of  a  room,  and  some¬ 
times  also  the  power-looms,  and  they  worked 
independently  —  a  characteristic  organisation 
partly  maintained  until  now,  and  well  adapted 
to  illustrate  the  efforts  of  the  petty  traders  to 
keep  their  ground,  notwithstanding  the  com¬ 
petition  of  the  factory.  And  it  must  be  said 
that  the  triumphs  of  the  factory  were  too  often 
achieved  only  by  means  of  the  most  fraudulent 
adulteration  and  the  underpaid  labour  of  the 
children. 

The  variety  of  domestic  industries  carried  on 
in  the  Lake  District  is  much  greater  than  might 
be  expected,  but  they  still  wait  for  careful 
explorers.  I  will  only  mention  the  hoop-makers, 
the  basket  trade,  the  charcoal-burners,  the 
bobbin-makers,  the  small  iron  furnaces  work¬ 
ing  with  charcoal  at  Backbarrow,  and  so  on.*  As 
a  whole,  we  do  not  well  know  the  petty  trades  of 
this  country,  and  therefore  we  sometimes  come 
across  quite  unexpected  facts.  Few  continental 

*  E.  Roscoe’s  notes  in  the  English  Illustrated  Magazine ,  May, 
1884. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  277 

writers  on  industrial  topics  would  guess,  indeed, 
that  twenty-five  years  ago  nails  were  made  by 
hand  by  thousands  of  men,  women,  and  children 
in  the  Black  Country  of  South  Staffordshire,  as 
also  in  Derbyshire,*  and  that  some  of  this  industry 
remains  still  in  existence,  or  that  the  best  needles 
are  made  by  hand  at  Redditch.  Chains  are  also 
made  by  hand  at  Dudley  and  Cradley,  and  al¬ 
though  the  Press  is  periodically  moved  to  speak 
of  the  wretched  conditions  of  the  chain-makers, 
men  and  women,  the  trade  still  maintains  itself  ; 
while  nearly  7,000  men  were  busy  in  1890  in  their 
small  workshops  in  making  locks,  even  of  the 
plainest  description,  at  Walsall,  Wolverhampton, 
and  Willenhall.  The  various  ironmongeries 
connected  with  horse-clothing  —  bits,  spurs, 
bridles,  and  so  on — are  also  largely  made  by 
hand  at  Walsall. 

The  Birmingham  gun  and  rifle  trades,  which 
also  belong  to  the  same  domain  of  small  industries, 
are  well  known.  As  to  the  various  branches  of 
dress,  there  are  still  important  divisions  of  the 
United  Kingdom  where  a  variety  of  domestic 
trades  connected  with  dress  is  carried  on  on  a 
large  scale.  I  need  only  mention  the  cottage 
industries  of  Ireland,  as  also  some  of  them  which 
have  survived  in  the  shires  of  Buckingham, 
Oxford,  and  Bedford ;  hosiery  is  a  common 

*  Bevan’s  Guide  to  English  Industries. 


278  SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 

occupation  in  the  villages  of  the  counties  of 
Nottingham  and  Derby ;  and  several  great 
London  firms  send  out  cloth  to  be  made  into  dress 
in  the  villages  of  Sussex  and  Hampshire.  Woollen 
hosiery  is  at  home  in  the  villages  of  Leicester, 
and  especially  in  Scotland  ;  straw-plaiting  and 
hat-making  in  many  parts  of  the  country ; 
while  at  Northampton,  Leicester,  Ipswich,  and 
Stafford  shoemaking  was,  till  quite  lately,  a 
widely  spread  domestic  occupation,  or  was  car¬ 
ried  on  in  small  workshops  ;  even  at  Norwich  it 
remains  a  petty  trade  to  some  extent,  notwith¬ 
standing  the  competition  of  the  factories.  It 
must  also  be  said  that  the  recent  appearance  of 
large  boot  and  shoe  factories  has  considerably 
increased  the  number  of  girls  and  women  who  sew 
the  44  uppers  ”  and  embroider  the  slippers,  either 
in  their  own  houses  or  in  sweaters’  workshops, 
while  new  small  factories  have  developed  of  late 
for  the  making  of  heels,  card-boxes,  and  so  on. 

The  petty  trades  are  thus  an  important  factor 
of  industrial  life  even  in  Great  Britain,  although 
many  of  them  have  gathered  into  the  towns. 
But  if  we  find  in  this  country  so  many  fewer 
rural  industries  than  on  the  Continent,  we  must 
not  imagine  that  their  disappearance  is  due 
only  to  a  keener  competition  of  the  factories. 
The  chief  cause  was  the  compulsory  exodus  from 
the  villages. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


279 


As  everyone  knows  from  Thorold  Rogers’ 
wTork,  the  growth  of  the  factory  system  in  Eng¬ 
land  was  intimately  connected  with  that  enforced 
exodus.  Whole  industries,  which  prospered  till 
then,  were  killed  downright  by  the  forced  clear¬ 
ing  of  estates.*  The  workshops,  much  more  even 
than  the  factories,  multiply  wherever  they  find 
cheap  labour  ;  and  the  specific  feature  of  this 
country  is,  that  the  cheapest  labour — that  is,  the 
greatest  number  of  destitute  people — is  to  be 
found  in  the  great  cities.  The  agitation  raised 
(with  no  result)  in  connection  with  the  “Dwellings 
of  the  Poor,”  the  “  Unemployed,”  and  the 
“  Sweating  System,”  has  fully  disclosed  that 
characteristic  feature  of  the  economic  life  of 
England  and  Scotland  ;  and  the  painstaking 
researches  made  by  Mr.  Charles  Booth  have 
shown  that  one-quarter  of  the  population  of  Lon¬ 
don — that  is,  1,000,000  out  of  the  3,800,000  who 
entered  within  the  scope  of  his  inquest — would  be 
happy  if  the  heads  of  their  families  could  have 
regular  earnings  of  something  like  £1  a  week  all 
the  year  round.  Half  of  them  would  be  satis¬ 
fied  with  even  less  than  that.  The  same  state 
of  tilings  was  found  by  Mr.  Seebohm  Rowntree 
at  York. |  Cheap  labour  is  offered  in  such 
quantities  in  the  suburbs  of  all  the  great  cities 

*  Thorold  Rogers,  The  Economic  Interpretation  of  History. 

f  Poverty  :  a  Study  of  Town  Life ,  London  (Macmillan),  1901. 


280 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


of  Great  Britain,  that  the  petty  and  domestic 
trades,  which  are  scattered  on  the  Continent  in 
the  villages,  gather  in  this  country  in  the  cities. 

Exact  figures  as  to  the  small  industries  are 
wanting,  but  a  simple  walk  through  the  suburbs 
of  London  would  do  much  to  realise  the  variety 
of  petty  trades  which  swarm  in  the  metropolis, 
and,  in  fact,  in  all  chief  urban  agglomerations. 
The  evidence  given  before  the  “  Sweating 
System  Committee  ”  ha$  shown  how  far  the  fur¬ 
niture  and  ready-made  clothing  palaces  and  the 
“  Bonheur  des  Dames  ”  bazaars  of  London  are 
mere  exhibitions  of  samples,  or  markets  for 
the  sale  of  the  produce  of  the  small  industries. 
Thousands  of  sweaters,  some  of  them  having 
their  own  workshops,  and  others  merely  dis¬ 
tributing  work  to  sub-sweaters  who  distribute 
it  again  amidst  the  destitute,  supply  those 
palaces  and  bazaars  with  goods  made  in  the 
slums  or  in  very  small  workshops.  The  com¬ 
merce  is  centralised  in  those  bazaars — not  the 
industry.  The  furniture  palaces  and  bazaars 
are  thus  merely  playing  the  part  which  the 
feudal  castle  formerly  played  in  agriculture  : 
they  centralise  the  profits  —  not  the  produc¬ 
tion. 

In  reality,  the  extension  of  the  petty  trades, 
side  by  side  with  the  great  factories,  is  nothing 
to  be  wondered  at.  It  is  an  economic  necessity. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  281 

The  absorption  of  the  small  workshops  by  bigger 
concerns  is  a  fact  which  had  struck  the  econo¬ 
mists  in  the  ’forties  of  the  last  century,  especially 
in  the  textile  trades.  It  is  continued  still  in 
many  other  trades,  and  is  especially  striking  in  a 
number  of  very  big  concerns  dealing  with  metals 
and  war  supplies  for  the  different  States.  Buff/ 
there  is  another  process  which  is  going  on  parallel  7 
with  the  former,  and  which  consists  in  the ) 
continuous  creation  of  new  industries,  usually ) 
making  their  start  on  a  small  scale.  Each 
new  factory  calls  into  existence  a  number  of 
small  workshops,  partly  to  supply  its  own  needs 
and  partly  to  submit  its  produce  to  a  further 
transformation.  Thus,  to  quote  but  one  instance, 
the  cotton  mills  have  created  an  immense  demand 
for  wooden  bobbins  and  reels,  and  thousands  of 
men  in  the  Lake  District  set  to  manfuacture 
them — by  hand  first,  and  later  on  with  the  aid 
of  some  plain  machinery.  Only  quite  recently, 
after  years  had  been  spent  in  inventing  and 
improving  the  machinery,  the  bobbins  began  to 
be  made  on  a  larger  scale  in  factories.  And  • 
even  yet,  as  the  machines  are  very  costly,  a  great 
quantity  of  bobbins  are  made  in  small  work¬ 
shops,  with  but  fit  tie  aid  from  machines,  while 
the  factories  themselves  are  relatively  small, 
and  seldom  employ  more  than  fifty  operatives — 
chiefly  children.  As  to  the  reels  of  irregular 


282  SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 

shape,  they  are  still  made  by  hand,  or  partly 
with  the  aid  of  small  machines,  continually  in¬ 
vented  by  the  workers.  New  industries  thus 
grow  up  to  supplant  the  old  ones  ;  each  of  them 
passes  through  a  preliminary  stage  on  a  small 
scale  before  reaching  the  great  factory  stage  ; 
and  the  more  active  the  inventive  genius  of  a 
nation  is,  the  more  it  has  of  these  budding 
industries.  The  countless  small  bicycle  works 
which  have  lately  grown  up  in  this  country, 
and  are  supplied  with  ready-made  parts  of  the 
bicycle  by  the  larger  factories,  are  an  instance 
in  point.  The  domestic  and  small  workshops 
fabrication  of  boxes  for  matches,  boots,  hats, 
confectionery,  grocery  and  so  on  is  another 
familiar  instance. 

Besides,  the  large  factory  stimulates  the  birth 
of  new  petty  trades  by  creating  new  wants. 
The  cheapness  of  cottons  and  woollens,  of  paper 
and  brass,  has  created  hundreds  of  new  small 
industries.  Our  households  are  full  of  their 
produce — mostly  things  of  quite  modern  inven- 
•  tion.  And  while  some  of  them  already  are 
turned  out  by  the  million  in  the  great  factory, 
all  have  passed  through  the  small  workshop 
stage,  before  the  demand  was  great  enough  to 
require  the  great  factory  organisation.  The  more 
we  may  have  of  new  inventions,  the  more  shall 
we  have  of  such  small  industries  ;  and  again, 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


283 


the  more  we  have  of  them,  the  more  shall  we 
have  of  the  inventive  genius,  the  want  of  which 
is  so  justly  complained  of  in  this  country  (by 
W.  Armstrong,  amongst  many  others).  We 
must  not  wonder,  therefore,  if  we  see  so  many 
small  trades  in  this  country  ;  but  we  must  re¬ 
gret  that  the  great  number  have  abandoned  the 
villages  in  consequence  of  the  bad  conditions  of 
land  tenure,  and  that  they  have  migrated  in  such 
numbers  to  the  cities,  to  the  detriment  of  agri¬ 
culture. 

In  England,  as  everywhere,  the  small  industries  f 
are  an  important  factor  in  the  industrial  life  of 
the  country  ;  and  it  is  chiefly  in  the  infinite 
variety  of  the  small  trades,  which  utilise  the  ; 
half -fabricated  produce  of  the  great  industries, 
that  inventive  genius  is  developed,  and  the  rudi-  i 
ments  of  thefuture  great  industries  are  elaborated. 
The  small  bicycle  workshops,  with  the  hundreds 
of  small  improvements  which  they  introduced, 
have  been  under  our  very  eyes  the  primary  cells 
out  of  which  the  great  industry  of  the  motor 
cars,  and  later  on  of  the  aeroplanes,  has  grown 
up.  The  small  village  jam-makers  were  the 
precursors  and  the  rudiments  of  the  great  fac¬ 
tories  of  preserves  which  now  employ  hundreds 
of  workers.  And  so  on. 

Consequently,  to  affirm  that  the  small  indus¬ 
tries  are  doomed  to  disappear,  while  we  see  new 


284 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


ones  appear  every  day,  is  merely  to  repeat  a 
hasty  generalisation  that  was  made  in  the  earlier 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century  by  those  who 
witnessed  the  absorption  of  hand-work  by 
machinery  work  in  the  cotton  industry — a 
generalisation  which,  as  we  saw  already,  and 
are  going  still  better  to  see  on  the  following 
pages,  finds  no  confirmation  from  the  study  of 
industries,  great  and  small,  and  is  upset  by  the 
censuses  of  the  factories  and  workshops.  Far 
^from  showing  a  tendency  to  disappear,  the  small 
industries  show,  on  the  contrary,  a  tendency  to¬ 
wards  making  a  further  development,  since  the 
municipal  supply  of  electrical  power — such  as 
we  have,  for  instance,  in  Manchester — permits 
the  owner  of  a  small  factory  to  have  a  cheap 
supply  of  motive  power,  exactly  in  the  proportion 
required  at  a  given  time,  and  to  pay  only  for 
what  is  really  consumed. 


Petty  Trades  in  France. 

Small  industries  are  met  with  in  France  in  a 
very  great  variety,  and  they  represent  a  most 
important  feature  of  national  economy.  It  is 
estimated,  in  fact,  that  while  one-half  of  the 
population  of  France  live  upon  agriculture,  and 
one-third  upon  industry,  this  third  part  is  equally 
distributed  between  the  great  industry  and  the 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


285 


small  one.*  This  last  occupies  about  1,650,000 
workers  and  supports  from  4,000,000  to  5,000,000 
persons.  A  considerable  number  of  peasants 
who  resort  to  small  industries  without  abandon¬ 
ing  agriculture  would  have  to  be  added  to  the 
just-mentioned  items,  and  the  additional  earn¬ 
ings  which  these  peasants  find  in  industry  are  so 
important  that  in  several  parts  of  France  peasant 
proprietorship  could  not  be  maintained  without 
the  aid  derived  from  the  rural  industries. 

The  small  peasants  know  what  they  have  to 
expect  the  day  they  become  factory  hands  in  a 
town  ;  and  so  long  as  they  have  not  been  dis¬ 
possessed  by  the  money-lender  of  their  lands  and 
houses,  and  so  long  as  the  village  rights  in  the 

*  These  figures,  which  were  found  during  the  census  of  1866, 
have  not  changed  much  since,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  follow¬ 
ing  table  which  gives  the  proportional  quantities  of  the  different 
categories  of  the  active  population  of  both  sexes  (employers, 
working  men,  and  clerks)  in  1866  and  1896  : — 


I860. 

1896. 

Agriculture  .... 

52  per  cent. 

47  per  cent. 

Industry  ...... 

34  „ 

35  „ 

Commerce  .... 

A 

5  „ 

Transport  and  various  . 

3  „ 

5  „ 

Liberal  professions  . 

7  „ 

8  „ 

As  has  been  remarked  by  M.  S.  Fontaine  who  worked  out  the 
results  of  the  last  census,  “  the  number  of  persons  employed  in 
industry  properly  speaking,  although  it  has  increased,  has  never¬ 
theless  absorbed  a  smaller  'percentage  of  the  loss  sustained  by  the 
agricultural  population  than  the  other  categories.” — Rtsultats 
statitisques  du  recensement  des  professions,  t.  iv.,  p.  8. 


286 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


communal  grazing  grounds  or  woods  have  not 
been  lost,  they  cling  to  a  combination  of  industry 
with  agriculture.  Having,  in  most  cases,  no 
horses  to  plough  the  land,  they  resort  to  an 
arrangement  which  is  widely  spread,  if  not 
universal,  among  small  French  landholders,  even 
in  purely  rural  districts  (  I  saw  it  even  in  Haute- 
Savoie).  One  of  the  peasants  who  keeps  a 
plough  and  a  team  of  horses  tills  all  the  fields 
in  turn.  At  the  same  time,  owing  to  a  wide 
maintenance  of  the  communal  spirit,  which  I 
have  described  elsewhere,*  further  support  is 
found  in  the  communal  shepherd,  the  communal 
wine-press,  and  various  forms  of  “  aids  55  amongst 
the  peasants.  And  wherever  the  village-com¬ 
munity  spirit  is  maintained,  the  small  industries 
persist,  while  no  effort  is  spared  to  bring  the  small 
plots  under  higher  culture. 

Market-gardening  and  fruit  culture  often  go 
hand  in  hand  with  small  industries.  And 
wherever  well-being  is  found  on  a  relatively 
unproductive  soil,  it  is  nearly  always  due  to  a 
combination  of  the  two  sister  arts. 

The  most  wonderful  adaptations  of  the  small 
industries  to  new  requirements,  and  substantial 
technical  progress  in  the  methods  of  production, 
can  be  noted  at  the  same  time.  It  may  even  be 

*  Mutual  Aid :  a  Factor  of  Evolution.  London  (Heine- 
mann),  1902. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


287 


said  of  France,  as  it  has  been  said  of  Russia,  that 
when  a  rural  industry  dies  out,  the  cause  of  its 
decay  is  found  much  less  in  the  competition  of 
rival  factories — in  hundreds  of  localities  the  small 
industry  undergoes  a  complete  modification,  or 
it  changes  its  character  in  such  cases — than  in 
the  decay  of  the  population  as  agriculturists. 
Continually  we  see  that  only  when  the  small 
landholders  have  been  ruined,  as  such,  by  a 
group  of  causes — the  loss  of  communal  meadows, 
or  abnormally  high  rents,  or  the  havoc  made  in 
some  locality  by  the  marchands  de  biens  (swindlers 
enticing  the  peasants  to  buy  land  on  credit), 
or  the  bankruptcy  of  some  shareholders’  com¬ 
pany  whose  shares  had  been  eagerly  taken  by 
the  peasants  *— only  then  do  they  abandon  both 
the  land  and  the  rural  industry  and  emigrate 
towards  the  towns. 

Otherwise,  a  new  industry  always  grows  up 
when  the  competition  of  the  factory  becomes 
too  acute  —  a  wonderful,  hardly  suspected 
adaptability  being  displayed  by  the  small  in¬ 
dustries  ;  or  else  the  rural  artisans  resort  to 
some  form  of  intensive  farming,  gardening,  etc., 
and  in  the  meantime  some  other  industry  makes 
its  appearance.  A  closer  study  of  France  under 
this  aspect  is  instructive  in  a  high  degree. 

*  See  Baudrillart’s  Les  Populations  agricolcs  de  la  France : 
Normandie. 


288  SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 

It  is  evident  that  in  most  textile  industries 
the  power-loom  supersedes  the  hand-loom,  and 
the  factory  takes,  or  has  taken  already,  the  place 
of  the  cottage  industry.  Cottons,  plain  linen, 
and  machine-made  lace  are  now  produced  at  such 
a  low  cost  by  machinery  that  hand-weaving 
evidently  becomes  an  anachronism  for  the 
plainest  descriptions  of  such  goods.  Conse¬ 
quently,  though  there  were  in  France,  in  the 
year  1876,  328,300  hand-looms  as  against  121,340 
power-looms,  it  may  safely  be  taken  that  the 
number  of  the  former  has  been  considerably 
reduced  within  the  next  twenty  years.  How¬ 
ever,  the  slowness  with  which  this  change  is 
being  accomplished  is  one  of  the  most  striking 
features  of  the  present  industrial  organisation 
of  the  textile  trades  of  France. 

The  causes  of  this  power  of  resistance  of  hand- 
loom-weaving  become  especially  apparent  when 
one  consults  such  works  as  Reybaud’s  Le  Coton , 
which  was  written  in  1863,  nearly  half  a  century 
ago — that  is,  at  a  time  when  the  cottage  industries 
were  still  fully  alive.  Though  an  ardent  admirer 
himself  of  the  great  industries,  Reybaud  faith¬ 
fully  noted  the  striking  superiority  of  well-being 
in  the  weavers’  cottages  as  compared  with  the 
misery  of  the  factory  hands  in  the  cities.  Al¬ 
ready  then,  the  cities  of  St.  Quentin,  Lille, 
Roubaix  and  Amiens  were  great  centres  for 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


289 


cotton-spinning  mills  and  cotton-weaving  fac¬ 
tories.  But,  at  the  same  time,  all  sorts  of  cottons 
were  woven  in  hand-looms,  in  the  very  suburbs 
of  St.  Quentin  and  in  a  hundred  villages  and 
hamlets  around  it,  to  be  sold  for  finishing  in  the 
city.  .And  Reybaud  remarked  that  the  horrible 
dwellings  in  town,  and  the  general  condition  of 
the  factory  hands,  atood  in  a  wonderful  contrast 
with  the  relative  welfare  of  the  rural  weavers. 
Nearly  every  one  of  these  last  had  his  own  house 
and  a  small  field  which  he  continued  to  cultivate.* 

Even  in  such  a  branch  as  the  fabrication  of 
plain  cotton  velvets,  in  which  the  competition 
of  the  factories  was  especially  keenly  felt,  home¬ 
weaving  was  widely  spread,  in  1863  and  even  in 
1878,  in  the  villages  round  Amiens.  Although 
the  earnings  of  the  rural  weavers  were  small, 
as  a  rule,  the  weavers  preferred  to  keep  to  their 
own  cottages,  to  their  own  crops  and  to  their 
own  cattle  ;  and  only  repeated  commercial 
crises,  as  well  as  several  of  the  above-mentioned 
causes,  hostile  to  the  small  peasant,  compelled 
most  of  them  to  give  up  the  struggle,  and  to 
seek  employment  in  the  factories,  while  part  of 
them  have,  by  this  time,  again  returned  to 
agriculture  or  taken  to  market-gardening. 

Another  important  centre  for  rural  industries 
was  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Rouen,  where  no 

*  Le  Coton  :  son  regime,  ses  problemes.  Paris,  18G3,  p.  170. 

10 


290  SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 

less  than  110,000  persons  were  employed,  in 
1863,  in  weaving  cottons  for  the  finishing  fac¬ 
tories  of  that  city.  In  the  valley  of  the  Andelle, 
in  the  department  of  Eure,  each  village  was  at 
that  time  an  industrial  bee-hive  ;  each  stream¬ 
let  was  utilised  for  setting  into  work  a*  small 
factory.  Reybaud  described  the  condition  of 
the  peasants  who  combined  agriculture  with 
work  at  the  rural  factory  as  most  satisfactory, 
especially  in  comparison  with  the  condition  of 
the  slum-dwellers  at  Rouen,  and  he  even  men¬ 
tioned  a  case  or  two  in  which  the  village  fac¬ 
tories  belonged  to  the  village  communities. 

Seventeen  years  later,  Baudrillart  *  depicted 
the  same  region  in  very  much  the  same  words  ; 
and  although  the  rural  factories  had  had  to 
yield  to  a  great  extent  before  the  big  fac¬ 
tories,  the  rural  industry  was  still  valued  as 
showing  a  yearly  production  of  85,000,000 
francs  (£2,400,000). 

At  the  present  time,  the  factories  must  have 
made  further  progress  ;  but  we  still  see  from 
the  excellent  descriptions  of  M.  Ardouin  Du- 
mazet,  whose  work  will  have  in  the  future 
almost  the  same  value  as  Arthur  Young’s 
Travels,  f  that  a  considerable  portion  of  the 

*  Les  Populations  agricoles  de  la  France  :  Normandie. 

f  V oy age  en  France.  Paris,  1893-1910  (Berget-Levreau,  pub¬ 
lishers),  56  volumes  already  published. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


291 


rural  weavers  has  still  survived  ;  while  at  the 
same  time  one  invariably  meets,  even  nowadays, 
with  the  remark  that  relative  well-being  is 
prominent  in  the  villages  in  which  weaving 
is  connected  with  agriculture. 

Up  to  the  present  time,  M.  Ardouin  Dumazet 
writes,  “  there  is  an  industry  which  gives 
work  to  many  hand-looms  in  the  villages ;  it  is 
the  weaving  of  various  stuffs  for  umbrellas  and 
ladies’  boots.”  Amiens  is  the  chief  centre  for 
this  weaving.*  In  other  places  they  are  making 
dresses  out  of  Amiens  velvet  and  various  stuffs 
woven  at  Roubaix.  It  is  a  new  industry  ;  it 
has  taken  the  place  of  the  old  one,  which 
was  making  of  Amiens  a  second  Lyons. 

In  the  district  of  Le  Thelle,  to  the  south  of 
Beauvais,  there  is  “  a  multitude  of  petty  trades, 
of  which  one  hardly  imagines  the  importance. 
I  have  seen,”  M.  Dumazet  says,  “  small  factories 
of  buttons  made  from  bone,  ivory,  or  mother- 
of-pearl,  brushes,  shoe-horns,  keys  for  pianos, 
dominoes,  counters  and  dice,  spectacle-cases, 
small  articles  for  the  writing-table,  handles  for 
tools,  measures,  billiard  keys — what  not  !  .  .  . 
There  is  not  one  single  village,  however  small, 
the  population  of  which  should  not  have  its  own 
industry.”  f  At  the  same  time  it  must  not 

*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  xvii.,  p.  242. 

|  Ibid.,  vol.  xvii.,  pp.  100,  101. 


292 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


be  forgotten  that  thousands  of  small  articles 
for  the  writing-table  and  for  draughtsmen  are 
fabricated  on  a  large  scale  in  the  small  factories 
in  the  same  region.  Some  of  the  workshops 
are  situated  in  private  houses,  and  in  some  of 
them  artistic  work  is  made  ;  but  most  of  them 
are  located  in  special  houses,  where  the  neces¬ 
sary  power  is  hired  by  the  owner  of  the  work¬ 
shop.  You  see  here  “  a  fantastic  activity  ” — • 
the  word  is  M.  Dumazet’s  ;  the  division  of 
labour  is  very  great,  and  everywhere  they 
invent  new  machine-tools. 

Finally,  in  the  villages  of  the  Vermandois 
district  (department  of  the  Aisne),  we  find  a 
considerable  number  of  hand-looms  (more  than 
3,000)  upon  which  mixed  stuffs  made  of  cotton, 
wool  and  silk  are  woven.* 

Of  course,  it  must  be  recognised  that,  as  a 
rule,  in  northern  France,  where  cottons  are 
fabricated  on  a  large  scale  in  factory  towns, 
hand- weaving  in  the  villages  is  nearly  gone. 
But,  as  is  seen  already  from  the  preceding,  new 
small  industries  have  grown  up  instead,  and 
this  is  also  the  case  in  many  other  parts  of  France. 

Taking  the  region  situated  between  Rouen 
in  the  north-east,  Orleans  in  the  south-east, 
Rennes  in  the  north-west,  and  Nantes  in  the 
south-west — that  is,  the  old  provinces  of  Nor- 

*  Ardouin  Dumazct,  vol.  xix.,  p.  10. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


293 


mandy,  Perche  and  Maine,  and  partly  Touraine 
and  Anjou,  as  they  were  seen  by  Ardouin 
Dumazet  in  1895 — we  find  there  quite  a  variety 
of  domestic  and  petty  industries,  both  in  the 
villages  and  in  the  towns. 

At  Laval  (to  the  south-east  of  Rennes),  where 
drills  ( coutils )  were  formerly  woven  out  of  flax 
in  hand-looms,  and  at  Alenin,  formerly  a 
great  centre  for  the  cottage-weaving  of  linen, 
as  well  as  for  hand-made  lace,  Ardouin  Dumazet 
found  both  the  house  and  the  factory  linen 
industry  in  a  lingering  state.  Cotton  takes  the 
lead.  Drills  are  now  made  out  of  cotton  in  the 
factories,  and  the  demand  for  flax  goods  is 
very  small.  Both  domestic  and  factory  weaving 
of  flax  goods  are  accordingly  in  a  poor  condition. 
The  cottagers  abandoned  that  branch  of  weaving, 
and  the  large  factories,  which  had  been  erected  at 
Alenin  with  the  intention  of  creating  a  flax  and 
hemp-cloth  industry,  had  to  be  closed.  Only  one 
factory,  occupying  250  hands,  remains  ;  while 
nearly  23,000  weavers,  who  found  occupation 
at  Mans,  Fresnay  and  Alengon  in  hemp  cloths 
and  fine  linen,  had  to  abandon  that  industry. 
Those  who  worked  in  factories  have  emigrated 
to  other  towns,  while  those  who  had  not  broken 
with  agriculture  reverted  to  it.  In  this  struggle 
of  cotton  versus  flax  and  hemp,  the  former  was 
victorious. 


294 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


As  to  lace,  it  is  made  in  such  quantities  by 
machinery  at  Calais,  Caudry,  St.  Quentin  and 
Tarare  that  only  high-class  artistic  lace-making 
continues  on  a  small  scale  at  Alenin  itself, 
but  it  still  remains  a  by-occupation  in  the 
surrounding  country.  Besides,  at  Flers,  and  at 
Ferte  Mace  (a  small  town  to  the  south  of  the 
former),  hand-weaving  is  still  carried  on  in 
about  5,400  hand-looms,  although  the  whole 
trade,  in  factories  and  villages  alike,  is  in  a 
piteous  state  since  the  Spanish  markets  have 
been  lost.  Spain  has  now  plenty  of  her  own 
cotton  mills.  Twelve  big  spinning  mills  at 
Conde  (where  4,000  tons  of  cotton  were  spun  in 
1883)  were  abandoned  in  1893,  and  the  workers 
were  thrown  into  a  most  miserable  condition.* 
On  the  contrary,  in  an  industry  which  supplies 
the  home  market — namely,  in  the  fabrication 
of  linen  handkerchiefs,  which  itself  is  of  a  quite 
recent  growth— we  see  that  cottage-weaving  is, 
even  now,  in  full  prosperity.  Cholet  (in  Maine- 
et-Loire,  south-west  of  Angers)  is  the  centre  of 
that  trade.  It  has  one  spinning  mill  and  one 
weaving  mill,  but  both  employ  considerably 
fewer  hands  than  domestic  weaving,  which  is 
spread  over  no  less  than  200  villages  of  the  sur¬ 
rounding  region. f  Neither  at  Rouen  nor  in 

*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  ii.,  p.  167. 

f  In  Maine-et-Loire,  la  Vendee,  Loire  Inferieure,  and  Deux- 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  295 

the  industrial  cities  of  Northern  France  are  so 
many  linen  handkerchiefs  fabricated  as  in  this 
region  in  hand-looms,  we  are  told  by  Ardouin 
Dumazet. 

Within  the  curve  made  by  the  Loire  as  it  flows 
past  Orleans  we  find  another  prosperous  centre 
of  domestic  industries  connected  with  cottons. 
“  From  Romorantin  [in  Loire-et-Cher,  south  of 
Orleans]  to  Argenton  and  Le  Blanc,”  the  same 
writer  says,  “  we  have  one  immense  workshop 
where  handkerchiefs  are  embroidered,  and 
shirts,  cuffs,  collars  and  all  sorts  of  ladies’  linen 
are  sewn  or  embroidered.  There  is  not  one 
house,  even  in  the  tiniest  hamlets,  where  the 
women  would  not  be  occupied  in  that  trade  .  .  . 
and  if  this  work  is  a  mere  passe-temps  in  vine¬ 
growing  regions,  here  it  has  become  the  chief 
resource  of  the  population.”  *  Even  at  Romo¬ 
rantin  itself,  where  400  women  and  girls  are 
employed  in  one  factory,  there  are  more  than 
1,000  women  who  sew  linen  in  their  houses. 

The  same  must  be  said  of  a  group  of  industrial 
villages  peopled  with  clothiers  in  the  neigh¬ 
bourhood  of  another  Normandy  city,  Elboeuf. 
When  Baudrillart  visited  them  in  1878-1880, 
he  was  struck  with  the  undoubted  advantages 

Sevres.  The  same  revival  takes  place  in  Ireland,  where  the 
weaving  of  handkerchiefs  in  hand -looms  is  growing  in  the  shape 
of  a  small  village  industry. 

*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  i.,  p.  117  et  seq. 


296 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


offered  by  a  combination  of  agriculture  with 
industry.  Clean  houses,  clean  dresses,  and  a 
general  stamp  of  well-being  were  characteristic 
of  these  villages. 

Happily  enough,  weaving  is  not  the  only 
small  industry  of  both  this  region  and  Brit¬ 
tany.  On  the  contrary,  scores  of  other  small 
industries  enliven  the  villages  and  burgs.  At 
Fougeres  (in  Ule-et-Vilaine,  to  the  north-east 
of  Reims)  one  sees  how  the  factory  has  con¬ 
tributed  to  the  development  of  various  small 
and  domestic  trades.  In  1830  this  town  was  a 
great  centre  for  the  domestic  fabrication  of  the 
so-called  chaussons  de  tresse.  The  competition 
of  the  prisons  killed,  however,  this  primitive 
industry  ;  but  it  was  soon  substituted  by  the 
fabrication  of  soft  socks  in  felt  ( chaussons  de 
feutre).  This  last  industry  also  went  down, 
and  then  the  fabrication  of  boots  and  shoes 
was  introduced,  this  last  giving  origin,  in  its 
turn,  to  the  boot  and  shoe  factories,  of  which 
there  are  now  thirty-three  at  Fougeres,  employ¬ 
ing  8,000  workers  *  (yearly  production  about 
5,000,000  pairs).  But  at  the  same  time 
domestic  industries  took  a  new  development. 
Thousands  of  women  are  employed  now  in  their 
houses  in  sewing  the  “  uppers  ”  and  in  em¬ 
broidering  fancy  shoes.  Moreover,  quite  a 
*  Twelve  thousand  in  1906. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


297 


number  of  smaller  workshops  grew  up  in  the 
neighbourhood,  for  the  fabrication  of  card¬ 
board  boxes,  wooden  heels,  and  so  on,  as  well 
as  a  number  of  tanneries,  big  and  small.  And 
M.  Ardouin  Dumazet’s  remark  is,  that  one  is 
struck  to  find,  owing  to  these  industries,  an 
undoubtedly  higher  level  of  well-being  in  the 
villages — quite  unforeseen  in  the  centre  of  this 
purely  agricultural  region.* 

In  Brittany,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Quim- 
perle,  a  great  number  of  small  workshops  for 
the  fabrication  of  the  felt  hats  which  are  worn 
by  the  peasants  is  scattered  in  the  villages  ; 
and  rapidly  improving  agriculture  goes  hand 
in  hand  with  that  trade.  Well-being  is  a  dis¬ 
tinctive  feature  of  these  villages. f  At  Henne- 
bont  (on  the  southern  coast  of  Brittany)  1,400 
workers  are  employed  in  an  immense  factory 
in  the  fabrication  of  tins  for  preserves,  and 
every  year  twenty-two  to  twenty-three  tons  of 
iron  are  transformed  into  steel,  and  next  into 
tins,  which  are  sent  to  Paris,  Bordeaux,  Nantes, 
and  so  on.  But  the  factory  has  created  “  quite 
a  world  of  tiny  workshops  ”  in  this  purely 
agricultural  region  :  small  tin-ware  workshops, 
tanneries,  potteries,  and  so  on,  while  the  slags 
are  transformed  in  small  factories  into  manure. 

*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  yol.  v.,  p.  270. 

t  Ibid.,  vol.  v.,  p.  215. 


298 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


Agriculture  and  industry  are  thus  going  here 
hand  in  hand,  the  importance  of  not  severing 
the  union  being  perhaps  best  seen  at  Loudeac, 
a  small  town  in  the  midst  of  Brittany  (depart¬ 
ment  of  Cotes-du-Nord).  Formerly  the  villages 
in  this  neighbourhood  were  industrial,  all  ham¬ 
lets  being  peopled  with  weavers  who  fabricated 
the  well-known  Brittany  linen.  Now,  this  in¬ 
dustry  having  gone  down  very  much,  the 
weavers  have  simply  returned  to  the  soil.  Out 
of  an  industrial  town,  Loudeac  has  become 
an  agricultural  market  town  ;  *  and,  what  is 
most  interesting,  these  populations  conquer 
new  lands  for  agriculture  and  turn  the  formerly 
quite  unproductive  landes  into  rich  corn  fields  ; 
while  on  the  northern  coast  of  Brittany,  around 
Dol,  on  land  which  began  to  be  conquered  from 
the  sea  in  the  twelfth  century,  market-garden¬ 
ing  is  now  carried  on  to  a  very  great  extent  for 
export  to  England. 

Altogether,  it  is  striking  to  observe,  on 
perusing  M.  Ardouin  Dumazet’s  little  volumes, 
how  domestic  industries  go  hand  in  hand  with 
all  sorts  of  small  industries  in  agriculture — 
gardening,  poultry-farming,  fabrication  of  fruit 
preserves,  and  so  on — and  how  all  sorts  of  asso¬ 
ciations  for  sale  and  export  are  easily  intro¬ 
duced.  Mans  is,  as  known,  a  great  centre  for 
*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  v.,  pp.  259-266. 


4 

INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  299 

the  export  of  geese  and  all  sorts  of  poultry  to 
England. 

Part  of  Normandy  (namely,  the  departments 
of  Eure  and  Orne)  is  dotted  with  small  work¬ 
shops  where  all  sorts  of  small  brass  goods  and 
hardware  are  fabricated  in  the  villages.  Of 
course,  the  domestic  fabrication  of  pins  is 
nearly  gone,  and  as  for  needles,  polishing  only, 
in  a  very  primitive  form,  has  been  maintained 
in  the  villages.  But  all  sorts  of  small  hardware, 
including  nails,  lockets,  etc.,  in  great  variety, 
are  fabricated  in  'the  villages,  especially  round 
Laigle.  Stays  are  also  sewn  in  small  workshops 
in  many  villages,  notwithstanding  the  com¬ 
petition  of  prison  work.* 

Tinchebrai  (to  the  west  of  Flers)  is  a  real 
centre  for  a  great  variety  of  smaller  goods  in 
iron,  mother-of-pearl  and  horn.  All  sorts  of 
hardware  and  locks  are  fabricated  by  the 
peasants  during  the  time  they  can  spare  from 
agriculture,  and  real  works  of  art,  some  of  which 
were  much  admired  at  the  exhibition  of  1889, 
are  produced  by  these  humble  peasant  sculptors 
in  horn,  mother-of-pearl  and  iron.  Farther 
south,  the  polishing  of  marble  goods  is  carried 
on  in  numbers  of  small  workshops,  scattered 
round  Solesmes  and  grouped  round  one  central 

*  I  gave  some  information  about  French  prison  work  in  a 
book,  In  Russian  and  French  Prisons,  London,  1888. 


300 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


establishment  where  marble  pieces  are  roughly 
shaped  with  the  aid  of  steam,  to  be  finished 
in  the  small  village  workshops.  At  Sable  the 
workers  in  that  branch,  who  all  own  their 
houses  and  gardens,  enjoy  a  real  well-being 
especially  noticed  by  our  traveller.* 

In  the  woody  regions  of  the  Perche  and  the 
Maine  we  find  all  sorts  of  wooden  industries 
which  evidently  could  only  be  maintained 
owing  to  the  communal  possession  of  the 
woods.  Near  the  forest  of  Perseigne  there 
is  a  small  burg,  Fresnaye,  which  is  entirely 
peopled  with  workers  in  wood. 

“  There  is  not  one  house,”  Ardouin  Dumazet  writes,  “  in 
which  wooden  goods  would  not  be  fabricated.  Some  years  ago 
there  was  little  variety  in  their  produce  ;  spoons,  salt- boxes, 
shepherds’  boxes,  scales,  various  wooden  pieces  for  weavers, 
flutes  and  hautboys,  spindles,  wooden  measures,  funnels,  and 
wooden  bowls  were  only  made.  But  Paris  wanted  to  have  a 
thousand  things  in  which  wood  was  combined  with  iron  : 
mouse-traps,  cloak-pegs,  spoons  for  jam,  brooms.  .  .  .  And 
now  every  house  has  a  workshop  containing  either  a  turning- 
lathe,  or  some  machine-tools  for  chopping  wood,  for  making 
lattice-work,  and  so  on.  .  .  .  Quite  a  new  industry  was  born, 
and  the  most  coquettish  things  are  now  fabricated.  Owing  to 
this  industry  the  population  is  happy.  The  earnings  are  not 
high,  but  each  worker  owns  his  house  and  garden,  and  occa¬ 
sionally  a  bit  of  field.”  f 

At  Neufchatel  wooden  shoes  are  made,  and 
the  hamlet,  we  are  told,  has  a  most  smiling 
aspect.  To  every  house  a  garden  is  attached, 

*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  ii.,  p.  51. 

f  lbid.t  vol.  i.,  pp.  S05,  30G. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


301 


and  none  of  the  misery  of  big  cities  is  to  be  seen. 
At  Jupilles  and  in  the  surrounding  country  other 
varieties  of  wooden  goods  are  produced  :  taps, 
boxes  of  different  kinds,  together  with  wooden 
shoes ;  while  at  the  forest  of  Vibraye  two 
workshops  have  been  erected  for  turning  out 
umbrella  handles  by  the  million  for  all  France. 
One  of  these  workshops  having  been  founded 
by  a  worker  sculptor,  he  has  invented  and 
introduced  in  his  workshop  the  most  ingenious 
machine-tools.  About  150  men  work  at  this 
factory  ;  but  it  is  evident  that  half  a  dozen 
smaller  workshops,  scattered  in  the  villages, 
would  have  answered  equally  well. 

Going  now  over  to  a  quite  different  region — 
the  Nievre,  in  the  centre  of  France,  and  Haute 
Marne,  in  the  east — we  find  that  both  regions 
are  great  centres  for  a  variety  of  small  in¬ 
dustries,  some  of  which  are  maintained  by 
associations  of  workers,  while  others  have 
grown  up  in  the  shadow  of  factories.  The 
small  iron  workshops  which  formerly  covered 
the  country  have  not  disappeared  :  they  have 
undergone  a  transformation  ;  and  now  the 
country  is  covered  with  small  workshops  where 
agricultural  machinery,  chemical  produce,  and 
pottery  are  fabricated  ;  “  one  ought  to  go  as 

far  as  Guerigny  and  Fourchambault  to  find 


302 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


the  great  industry  ;  ”  *  while  a  number  of 
small  workshops  for  the  fabrication  of  a  variety 
of  hardware  flourish  by  the  side  of,  and  owing 
to  the  proximity  of,  the  industrial  centres. 

Pottery  makes  the  fortune  of  the  valley  of  the 
Loire  about  Nevers.  High-class  art  pottery  is 
made  in  this  town,  while  in  the  villages  plain 
pottery  is  fabricated  and  exported  by  mer¬ 
chants  who  go  about  with  their  boats  selling  it. 
At  Gien  a  large  factory  of  china  buttons  (made 
out  of  felspar-powder  cemented  with  milk)  has 
lately  been  established,  and  employs  1,500  work¬ 
men,  who  produce  from  3,500  to  4,500  lb.  of 
buttons  every  day.  And,  as  is  often  the  case, 
part  of  the  work  is  done  in  the  villages.  For 
many  miles  on  both  banks  of  the  Loire,  in  all 
villages,  old  people,  women  and  children  sew 
the  buttons  to  the  cardboard  pieces.  Of  course, 
that  sort  of  work  is  wretchedly  paid  ;  but  it  is 
resorted  to  only  because  there  is  no  other  sort 
of  industry  in  the  neighbourhood  to  which  the 
peasants  could  give  their  leisure  time. 

In  the  same  region  of  the  Haute  Marne, 
especially  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Nogent,  we 
find  cutlery  as  a  by-occupation  to  agriculture, 
Landed  property  is  very  much  subdivided  in 
that  part  of  France,  and  great  numbers  of 
peasants  own  but  from  two  to  three  acres  per 
*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  i.,  p.  52. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  303 

family,  or  even  less.  Consequently,  in  thirty 
villages  round  Nogent,  about  5,000  men  are 
engaged  in  cutlery,  chiefly  of  the  highest  sort 
(artistic  knives  are  occasionally  sold  at  as 
much  as  £20  a  piece),  while  the  lower  sorts  are 
fabricated  in  the  neighbourhoods  of  Thiers,  in 
Puy-de-Dome  (Auvergne).  The  Nogent  indus¬ 
try  has  developed  spontaneously,  with  no  aid 
from  without,  and  in  its  technical  part  it  shows 
considerable  progress.*  At  Thiers,  where  the 
cheapest  sorts  of  cutlery  are  made,  the  division 
of  labour,  the  cheapness  of  rent  for  small 
workshops  supplied  with  motive  power  from  the 
Durolle  river,  or  from  small  gas  motors,  the  aid 
of  a  great  variety  of  specially  invented  machine- 
tools,  and  the  existing  combination  of  machine- 
work  with  hand-work  have  resulted  in  such  a 
perfection  of  the  technical  part  of  the  trade 
that  it  is  considered  doubtful  whether  the 
factory  system  could  further  economise  labour. f 
For  twelve  miles  round  Thiers,  in  each  direction, 
all  the  streamlets  are  dotted  with  small  work¬ 
shops,  in  which  peasants,  who  continue  to 
cultivate  their  fields,  are  at  work. 

Basket-making  is  again  an  important  cottage 
industry  in  several  parts  of  France,  namely  in 

*  Prof.  Issaieff  in  the  Russian  Memoirs  of  the  Petty  Trades 
Commission  ( Trudy  Kustarnoi  Kommissii ),  vol.  v. 

f  Knives  are  scld  at  from  6s.  4d.  to  8s.  per  gross,  and  razors 
at  3s.  3d.  per  gross — “for  export.” 


304 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


Aisne  and  in  Haute  Marne.  In  this  last  de¬ 
partment,  at  Villaines,  everyone  is  a  basket- 
maker,  “  and  all  the  basket-makers  belong  to  a 
co-operative  society,”  Ardouin  Dumazet  re¬ 
marks.*  “  There  are  no  employers  ;  all  the 
produce  is  brought  once  a  fortnight  to  the  co-op¬ 
erative  stores  and  there  it  is  sold  for  the  associa¬ 
tion.  About  150  families  belong  to  it,  and  each 
owns  a  house  and  some  vineyards.”  At  Fays- 
Billot,  also  in  Haute  Marne,  1,500  basket-makers 
belong  to  an  association  ;  while  at  Thierache, 
where  several  thousand  men  are  engaged  in  the 
same  trade,  no  association  has  been  formed,  the 
earnings  being  in  consequence  extremely  low. 

Another  very  important  centre  of  petty 
trades  is  the  French  Jura,  or  the  French  part 
of  the  Jura  Mountains,  where  the  watch  trade 
has  attained,  as  known,  a  high  development. 
When  I  visited  these  villages  between  the 
Swiss  frontier  and  Besancon  in  the  year  1878, 
I  was  struck  by  the  high  degree  of  relative 
well-being  which  I  could  observe,  even  though 
I  was  perfectly  well  acquainted  with  the  Swiss 
villages  in  the  Val  de  Saint  Imier.  It  is  very 
probable  that  the  machine-made  watches  have 
brought  about  a  crisis  in  French  watch-making 
as  they  have  in  Switzerland.  But  it  is  known 
*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  i.,  p.  213  et  se<g. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  305 

that  part,  at  least,  of  the  Swiss  watch-makers 
have  strenuously  fought  against  the  necessity 
of  being  enrolled  in  the  factories,  and  that 
while  watch  factories  grew  up  at  Geneva  and 
elsewhere,  considerable  numbers  of  the  watch¬ 
makers  have  taken  to  divers  other  trades  which 
continue  to  be  carried  on  as  domestic  or  small 
industries.  I  must  only  add  that  in  the  French 
Jura  great  numbers  of  watch-makers  were  at 
the  same  time  owners  of  their  houses  and 
gardens,  very  often  of  bits  of  fields,  and 
especially  of  communal  meadows,  and  that  the 
communal  fruitier es,  or  creameries,  for  the 
common  sale  of  butter  and  cheese,  are  widely 
spread  in  that  part  of  France. 

So  far  as  I  could  ascertain,  the  development 
of  the  machine-made  watch  industry  has  not 
destroyed  the  small  industries  of  the  Jura  hills. 
The  watch-makers  have  taken  to  new  branches, 
and,  as  in  Switzerland,  they  have  created 
various  new  industries.  From  Ardouin  Du- 
mazet’s  travels  we  can,  at  anyrate,  borrow  an 
insight  into  the  present  state  of  the  southern 
part  of  this  region.  In  the  neighbourhoods  of 
Nantua  and  Cluses  silks  are  woven  in  nearly  all 
villages,  the  peasants  giving  to  weaving  their 
spare  time  from  agriculture,  while  quite  a 
number  of  small  workshops  (mostly  less  than 
twenty  looms,  one  of  100  looms)  are  scattered 


306 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


in  the  little  villages,  on  the  streamlets  running 
from  the  hills.  Scores  of  small  saw-mills  have 
also  been  built  along  the  streamlet  Merloz,  for 
the  fabrication  of  all  sorts  of  little  pretty  things 
in  wood.  At  Oyonnax,  a  small  town  on  the 
Ain,  we  have  a  big  centre  for  the  fabrication  of 
combs,  an  industry  more  than  200  years  old, 
which  took  a  new  development  since  the  last 
war  through  the  invention  of  celluloid.  No 
less  than  100  or  120  “  masters  ”  employ  from 
two  to  fifteen  workers  each,  while  over  1,200 
persons  work  in  their  houses,  making  combs 
out  of  Irish  horn  and  French  celluloid.  Wheel- 
power  wras  formerly  rented  in  small  workshops, 
but  electricity,  generated  by  a  waterfall,  has 
lately  been  introduced,  and  is  now  distributed 
in  the  houses  for  bringing  into  motion  small 
motors  of  from  one-quarter  to  twelve  horse¬ 
power.  And  it  is  remarkable  to  notice  that  as 
soon  as  electricity  gave  the  possibility  to  return 
to  domestic  work,  300  workers  left  at  once  the 
small  workshops  and  took  to  work  in  their 
houses.  Most  of  these  workers  have  their 
own  cottages  and  gardens,  and  they  show  a 
very  interesting  spirit  of  association.  They 
have  also  erected  four  workshops  for  making 
cardboard  boxes,  and  their  production  is  valued 
at  2,000,000  fr.  every  year.* 

*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  viii.,  p.  40. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


307 


At  St.  Claude,  which  is  a  great  centre  for 
briar  pipes  (sold  in  large  quantities  in  London 
with  English  trade-marks,  and  therefore  eagerly 
bought  by  those  Frenchmen  who  visit  London, 
as  a  souvenir  from  the  other  side  of  the  Channel), 
both  big  and  small  workshops,  supplied  by 
motive  force  from  the  Tacon  streamlet,  prosper 
by  the  side  of  each  other.  Over  4,000  men  and 
women  are  employed  in  this  trade,  while  all 
sorts  of  small  by-trades  have  grown  by  its 
side  (amber  and  horn  mouth-pieces,  sheaths, 
etc.).  Countless  small  workshops  are  busy 
besides,  on  the  banks  of  the  two  streams,  with 
the  fabrication  of  all  sorts  of  wooden  things  ; 
match-boxes,  beads,  sheaths  for  spectacles, 
small  things  in  horn,  and  so  on,  to  say  nothing 
of  a  rather  large  factory  (200  workers)  where 
metric  measures  are  fabricated  for  the  whole 
world.  At  the  same  time  thousands  of  persons 
in  St.  Claude,  in  the  neighbouring  villages  and 
in  the  smallest  mountain  hamlets,  are  busy  in 
cutting  diamonds  (an  industry  only  fifteen 
years  old  in  this  region),  and  other  thousands 
are  busy  in  cutting  various  less  precious  stones. 
All  this  is  done  in  quite  small  workshops  sup¬ 
plied  by  water-power.* 

*  Interesting  details  about  the  small  industries  of  this  region 
will  be  found  in  the  articles  of  Ch.  Guieysse,  in  Pages  libres,  1902, 

Nos.  66  and  71. 


308  SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 

The  extraction  of  ice  from  some  lakes  and  the 
gathering  of  oak-bark  for  tanneries  complete 
the  picture  of  these  busy  villages,  where  in¬ 
dustry  joins  hands  with  agriculture,  and  modern 
machines  and  appliances  are  so  well  put  in  the 
service  of  the  small  workshops. 

On  the  other  side,  at  Besan^on,  which  was, 
in  1878,  when  I  visited  it,  a  great  centre 
for  watch-making,  “  all  taken,  nothing  has  yet 
been  changed  in  the  habits  of  the  working- 
class,”  M.  Dumazet  wrote  in  1901.  The 
watch-makers  continued  to  work  in  their 
houses  or  in  small  workshops.*  Only  there 
was  no  complete  fabrication  of  the  watch  or 
the  clock.  Many  important  parts — the  wheels, 
etc. — were  imported  from  Switzerland  or  from 
different  towns  of  France.  And,  as  is  always 
the  case,  numerous  small  secondary  workshops 
for  making  the  watch-cases,  the  hands,  and  so 
on,  grew  up  in  that  neighbourhood. 

The  same  has  to  be  said  of  Montbeliard — 
another  important  centre  of  the  watch  trade. 
By  the  side  of  the  manufactures,  where  all  the 
parts  of  the  mechanism  of  the  watch  are  fabri¬ 
cated  by  machinery,  there  is  quite  a  number 
of  workshops  where  various  parts  of  the  watch 
are  made  by  skilled  workmen  ;  and  this  in¬ 
dustry  has  already  given  birth  to  a  new  branch 
*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  xxiii.,  pp.  105,  106. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  309 

— the  making  of  various  tools  for  these  work¬ 
shops,  as  also  for  different  other  trades. 

In  other  parts  of  the  same  region,  such  as 
Hericourt,  a  variety  of  small  industries  has 
grown  by  the  side  of  the  great  ironmongery 
factories.  The  city  spreads  into  the  villages, 
where  the  population  are  making  coffee-mills, 
spice-mills,  machines  for  crushing  the  grain  for 
the  cattle,  as  well  as  saddlery,  small  iron¬ 
mongery,  or  even  watches.  Elsewhere  the 
fabrication  of  different  small  parts  of  the  watch 
having  been  monopolised  by  the  factories,  the 
workshops  began  to  manufacture  the  small  parts 
of  the  bicycles,  and  later  on  of  the  motor-cars. 
In  short,  we  have  here  quite  a  world  of  indus¬ 
tries  of  modern  origin,  and  with  them  of  inven¬ 
tions  made  to  simplify  the  work  of  the  hand. 

Finally,  omitting  a  mass  of  small  trades,  1 
will  only  name  the  hat-makers  of  the  Loire,  the 
stationery  of  the  Ardeche,  the  fabrication  of 
hardware  in  the  Doubs,  the  glove-makers  of 
the  Isere,  the  broom  and  brush-makers  of  the 
Oise  (valued  at  £800,000  per  annum),  and  the 
house  machine-knitting  in  the  neighbourhoods 
of  Troyes.  But  I  must  say  a  few  words  more 
about  two  important  centres  of  small  industries  : 
the  Lyons  region  and  Paris. 

« 

At  the  present  time  the  industrial  region  of 


310 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


which  Lyons  is  the  centre  *  includes  the  de¬ 
partments  of  Rhone,  Loire,  Drome,  Saone-et- 
Loire,  Ain,  the  southern  part  of  the  Jura  de¬ 
partment,  and  the  western  part  of  Savoy,  as 
far  as  Annecy,  while  the  silkworm  is  reared 
as  far  as  the  Alps,  the  Cevennes  Mountains, 
and  the  neighbourhoods  of  Macon.  It  con¬ 
tains,  besides  fertile  plains,  large  hilly  tracks, 
also  verv  fertile  as  a  rule,  but  covered  with 
snow  during  part  of  the  winter,  and  the  rural 
populations  are  therefore  bound  to  resort  to 
some  industrial  occupation  in  addition  to 
agriculture  ;  they  find  it  in  silk-weaving  and 
various  small  industries.  Altogether  it  may  be 
said  that  the  region  lyonnaise  is  characterised 
as  a  separate  centre  of  French  civilisation 
and  art,  and  that  a  remarkable  spirit  of  re¬ 
search,  discovery  and  invention  has  developed 
there  in  all  directions  —  scientific  and  indus¬ 
trial. 

The  Croix  Rousse  at  Lyons,  where  the  silk- 
weavers  ( canuts )  have  their  chief  quarters,  is 
the  centre  of  that  industry,  and  in  1895  the 
whole  of  that  hill,  thickly  covered  with  houses, 
five,  six,  eight  and  ten  storeys  high,  resounded 
with  the  noise  of  the  looms  which  were  busily 
going  in  every  department  of  that  big  agglom¬ 
eration.  Electricity  has  lately  been  brought 

*  For  further  details  see  Appendix  U. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


311 


into  the  service  of  this  domestic  industry,  sup¬ 
plying  motive  power  to  the  looms. 

To  the  south  of  Lyons,  in  the  city  of  Vienne, 
hand- weaving  is  disappearing.  “  Shoddy  ”  is 
now  the  leading  produce,  and  twenty-eight 
concerns  only  remain  out  of  the  120  fabriques 
which  existed  thirty  years  ago.  Old  woollen 
rags,  rags  of  carpets,  and  all  the  dust  from 
the  carding  and  spinning  in  the  wool  and 
cotton  factories  of  Northern  France,  with  a 
small  addition  of  cotton,  are  transformed  here 
into  cloth  which  flows  from  Vienne  to  all  the 
big  cities  of  France — 20,000  yards  of  “  shoddy  ” 
every  day — to  supply  the  ready-made  clothing 
factories.  Hand- weaving  has  evidently  nothing 
to  do  in  that  industry,  and  in  1890  only  1,300 
hand-looms  were  at  work  out  of  the  4,000 
which  were  in  motion  in  1870.  Large  factories, 
employing  a  total  of  1,800  workers,  have  taken 
the  place  of  these  hand- weavers,  while  “  shoddy  ” 
has  taken  the  place  of  cloth.  All  sorts  of 
flannels,  felt  hats,  tissues  of  horse-hair,  and  so 
on,  are  fabricated  at  the  same  time.  But 
while  the  great  factory  thus  conquered  the  city 
of  Vienne,  its  suburbs  and  its  nearest  surround¬ 
ings  became  the  centre  of  a  prosperous  garden¬ 
ing  and  fruit  culture,  which  has  already  been 
mentioned  in  chapter  iv. 

The  banks  of  the  Rhone,  between  Ampuis 


312 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


and  Condrieu,  are  one  of  the  wealthiest  parts 
of  all  France,  owing  to  the  shrubberies  and 
nurseries,  market-gardening,  fruit-growing,  vine¬ 
growing,  and  cheese-making  out  of  goats’  milk. 
House  industries  go  there  hand  in  hand  with  an 
intelligent  culture  of  the  soil ;  Condrieu,  for 
instance,  is  a  famous  centre  for  embroidery, 
which  is  made  partly  by  hand,  as  of  old,  and 
partly  by  machinery. 

In  the  west  of  Lyons,  at  l’Arbresles,  factories 
have  grown  up  for  making  silks  and  velvets  ; 
but  a  large  part  of  the  population  still  continue 
to  weave  in  their  houses  ;  while  farther  west, 
Panissieres  is  the  centre  of  quite  a  number  of 
villages  in  which  linen  and  silks  are  woven  as 
a  domestic  industry.  Not  all  these  workers 
own  their  houses,  but  those,  at  least,  who  own  or 
rent  a  small  piece  of  land  or  garden,  or  keep  a 
couple  of  cows,  are  said  to  be  well  off,  and  the 
land,  as  a  rule,  is  said  to  be  admirably  cultivated 
by  these  weavers. 

The  chief  industrial  centre  of  this  part  of  the 
Lyons  region  is  certainly  Tarare.  At  the  time 
when  Reybaud  wrote  his  already-mentioned 
work,  Le  Coton,  it  was  a  centre  for  the  manu¬ 
facture  of  muslins  and  it  occupied  in  this  in¬ 
dustry  the  same  position  as  Leeds  formerly 
occupied  in  this  country  in  the  woollen  cloth 
trade.  The  spinning  mills  and  the  large  finish- 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


313 


ing  factories  were  at  Tarare,  while  the  weaving 
of  the  muslins  and  the  embroidery  of  the  same 
were  made  in  the  surrounding  villages,  especi¬ 
ally  in  the  hilly  tracts  of  the  Beaujolais 
and  the  Forez.  Each  peasant  house,  each 
farm  and  metayerie  were  small  workshops  at 
that  time,  and  one  could  see,  Reybaud  wrote, 
the  lad  of  twenty  embroidering  fine  muslin 
after  he  had  finished  cleaning  the  farm  stables, 
without  the  work  suffering  in  its  delicacy  from 
a  combination  of  two  such  varied  pursuits.  On 
the  contrary,  the  delicacy  of  the  work  and  the 
extreme  variety  of  patterns  were  a  distinctive 
feature  of  the  Tarare  muslins  and  a  cause  of 
their  success.  All  testimonies  agreed  at  the 
same  time  in  recognising  that,  while  agriculture 
found  support  in  the  industry,  the  agricultural 
population  enjoyed  a  relative  well-being. 

By  this  time  the  industry  has  undergone  a 
thorough  transformation,  but  still  no  less  than 
60,000  persons,  representing  a  population  of 
about  250,000  souls,  work  for  Tarare  in  the 
hilly  tracts,  weaving  all  sorts  of  muslins  for  all 
parts  of  the  world,  and  they  earn  every  year 
£480,000  in  this  way. 

Amplepuis,  notwithstanding  its  own  factories 
of  silks  and  blankets,  remains  one  of  the  local 
centres  for  such  muslins  ;  while  close  by,  Thizy 
is  a  centre  for  a  variety  of  linings,  flannels, 


314 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


“  peruvian  serges,”  “  oxfords,”  and  other  mixed 
woollen-and-cotton  stuffs  which  are  woven  in 
the  mountains  by  the  peasants.  No  less  than 
3,000  hand-looms  are  thus  scattered  in  twenty- 
two  villages,  and  about  £600,000  worth  of 
various  stuffs  are  woven  every  year  by  the  rural 
weavers  in  this  neighbourhood  alone  ;  while 
15,000  power-looms  are  at  work  in  both  Thizy 
and  the  great  city  of  Roanne,  in  which  two 
towns  all  varieties  of  cottons  (linings,  flannelettes, 
apron  cloth)  and  silk  blankets  are  woven  in 
factories  by  the  million  yards. 

At  Cours,  1,600  workers  are  employed  in 
making  “  blankets,”  chiefly  of  the  lowest  sort 
(even  such  as  are  sold  at  2s.  and  even  lOd.  a 
piece,  for  export  to  Brazil)  ;  all  possible  and 
imaginable  rags  and  sweepings  from  all  sorts 
of  textile  factories  (jute,  cotton,  flax,  hemp, 
wool  and  silk)  are  used  for  that  industry,  in 
which  the  factory  is,  of  course,  fully  victorious. 
But  even  at  Roanne,  where  the  fabrication 
of  cottons  has  attained  a  great  degree  of  per¬ 
fection  and  9,000  power-looms  are  at  work, 
producing  every  year  more  than  30,000,000 
yards — even  at  Roanne  one  finds  with  astonish¬ 
ment  that  domestic  industries  are  not  dead, 
but  yield  every  year  the  respectable  amount 
of  more  than  10,000,000  yards  of  stuffs.  At 
the  same  time,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  that 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  315 

big  city  the  industry  of  fancy -knitting  has  taken 
within  the  last  thirty  years  a  sudden  develop¬ 
ment.  Only  2,000  women  were  employed  in  it 
in  1864,  but  their  numbers  were  estimated  by 
M.  Dumazet  at  20,000  ;  and,  without  abandon¬ 
ing  their  rural  work,  they  find  time  to  knit, 
with  the  aid  of  small  knitting-machines,  all 
sorts  of  fancy  articles  in  wool,  the  annual 
value  of  which  attains  £360,000.* 

It  must  not  be  thought,  however,  that  tex¬ 
tiles  and  connected  trades  are  the  only  small 
industries  in  this  locality.  Scores  of  various 
rural  industries  continue  to  exist  besides,  and 
in  nearly  all  of  them  the  methods  of  produc¬ 
tion  are  continually  improved.  Thus,  when  the 
rural  making  of  plain  chairs  became  unprofitable, 
articles  of  luxury  and  stylish  chairs  began  to  be 
fabricated  in  the  villages,  and  similar  trans¬ 
formations  are  found  everywhere. 

More  details  about  this  extremely  interesting 
region  will  be  found  in  the  Appendix,  but  one 
remark  must  be  made  in  this  place.  Notwith¬ 
standing  its  big  industries  and  coal  mines,  this 
part  of  France  has  entirely  maintained  its  rural 
aspect,  and  is  now  one  of  the  best  cultivated 
parts  of  the  country.  What  most  deserves 
admiration  is — not  so  much  the  development 
of  the  great  industries,  which,  after  all,  here  as 
*  Ardouin  Dumazet,  vol.  viii.,  p.  2G6. 


316 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


elsewhere,  are  to  a  great  extent  international 
in  their  origins — as  the  creative  and  inventive 
powers  and  capacities  of  adaptation  which 
appear  amongst  the  great  mass  of  these  in¬ 
dustrious  populations.  At  every  step,  in  the 
field,  in  the  garden,  in  the  orchard,  in  the 
dairy,  in  the  industrial  arts,  in  the  hundreds 
of  small  inventions  in  these  arts,  one  sees  the 
creative  genius  of  the  folk.  In  these  regions 
one  best  understands  why  France,  taking  the 
mass  of  its  population,  is  considered  the  richest 
country  of  Europe.* 

The  chief  centre  for  petty  trades  in  France  is, 
however,  Paris.  There  we  find,  by  the  side  of 
the  large  factories,  the  greatest  variety  of 
petty  trades  for  the  fabrication  of  goods  of 
every  description,  both  for  the  home  market 
and  for  export.  The  petty  trades  at  Paris  so 
much  prevail  over  the  factories  that  the  average 
number  of  workmen  employed  in  the  98,000 
factories  and  workshops  of  Paris  is  less  than 
six,  while  the  number  of  persons  employed  in 
workshops  which  have  less  than  five  operatives 
is  almost  twice  as  big  as  the  number  of  persons 
employed  in  the  larger  establishments.*!*  In 

*  Some  further  details  about  the  Lyons  region  and  St.  Etienne 
are  given  in  Appendix  U. 

t  In  1873,  out  of  a  total  population  of  1,851,800  inhabiting 
Paris,  816,040  (404,408  men  and  411,632  women)  were  living 
on  industry,  and  out  of  them  only  293,691  were  connected  with 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  317 

fact,  Paris  is  a  great  bee-hive  where  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  men  and  women  fabricate  in 
small  workshops  all  possible  varieties  of  goods 
which  require  skill,  taste  and  invention.  These 
small  workshops,  in  which  artistic  finish  and 
rapidity  of  work  are  so  much  praised,  neces¬ 
sarily  stimulate  the  mental  powers  of  the 
producers  ;  and  we  may  safely  admit  that  if 
the  Paris  workmen  are  generally  considered, 
and  really  are,  more  developed  intellectually 
than  the  workers  of  any  other  European  capital, 
this  is  due  to  a  great  extent  to  the  character 
of  the  work  they  are  engaged  in — a  v/ork 
which  implies  artistic  taste,  skill,  and  especi¬ 
ally  inventiveness,  always  wide  awake  in  order 
to  invent  new  patterns  of  goods  and  steadily 
to  increase  and  to  perfect  the  technical  methods 
of  production.  It  also  appears  very  probable 
that  if  we  find  a  highly  developed  working 
population  in  Vienna  and  Warsaw,  this  depends 
again  to  a  very  great  extent  upon  the  very 
considerable  development  of  similar  small 
industries,  which  stimulate  invention  and  so 
much  contribute  to  develop  the  worker’s  in¬ 
telligence. 

the  factories  ( grande  Industrie),  while  522,349  were  living  on  the 
petty  trades  {'petite  industrie). — Maximo  du  Camp,  Paris  et  ses 
Organes,  vol.  vi.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  of  late  the  small 
workshops  where  some  of  the  finest  work  is  made  in  metals, 
wood,  and  so  on,  have  begun  to  be  scattered  round  Paris. 


318  SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 

The  Galerie  du  travail  at  the  Paris  exhibitions 
is  always  a  most  remarkable  sight.  One  can 
appreciate  in  it  both  the  variety  of  the  small 
industries  which  are  carried  on  in  French 
towns  and  the  skill  and  inventing  powers  of  the 
workers.  And  the  question  necessarily  arises  : 
Must  all  this  skill,  all  this  intelligence,  be  swept 
away  by  the  factory,  instead  of  becoming  a 
new  fertile  source  of  progress  under  a  better 
organisation  of  production  ?  must  all  this 
independence  and  inventiveness  of  the  worker 
disappear  before  the  factory  levelling  ?  and, 
if  it  must,  would  such  a  transformation  be  a 
progress,  as  so  many  economists  who  have 
only  studied  figures  and  not  human  beings 
are  ready  to  maintain  ? 

At  anyrate,  it  is  quite  certain  that  even  if  the 
absorption  of  the  French  petty  trades  by  the 
big  factories  were  possible — which  seems  ex¬ 
tremely  doubtful — the  absorption  would  not  be 
accomplished  so  soon  as  that.  The  small  in¬ 
dustry  of  Paris  fights  hard  for  its  maintenance, 
and  it  shows  its  vitality  by  the  numberless 
machine-tools  which  are  continually  invented  by 
the  workers  for  improving  and  cheapening  the 
produce. 

The  numbers  of  motors  which  were  exhibited 
at  the  last  exhibitions  in  the  Galerie  du  travail 
bear  a  testimony  to  the  fact  that  a  cheap  motor, 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


319 


for  the  small  industry,  is  one  of  the  leading 
problems  of  the  day.  Motors  weighing  only 
forty-five  lb.,  including  the  boiler,  were  exhibited 
in  1889  to  answer  that  want.  Small  two-horse¬ 
power  engines,  fabricated  by  the  engineers  of 
the  Jura  (formerly  watch-makers)  in  their  small 
workshops,  were  at  that  time  another  attempt 
to  solve  the  problem — to  say  nothing  of  the 
water,  gas  and  electrical  motors.*  The  trans¬ 
mission  of  steam-power  to  230  small  workshops 
which  was  made  by  the  Societe  des  Immeubles 
industriels  was  another  attempt  in  the  same 
direction,  and  the  increasing  efforts  of  the  French 
engineers  for  finding  out  the  best  means  of 
transmitting  and  subdividing  power  by  means 
of  compressed  air,  “  tele-dynamic  cables,”  and 
electricity  are  indicative  of  the  endeavours  of 
the  small  industry  to  retain  its  ground  in  the 
face  of  the  competition  of  the  factories.  (See 
Appendix  V.)  , 

Such  are  the  small  industries  in  France,  as 
they  have  been  described  by  observers  who  saw 
them  on  the  spot.  Is  is,  however,  most  inter¬ 
esting  to  have  exact  statistical  items  concerning 

*  Everyone  knows  what  an  immense  progress  has  been 
realised  since  by  the  motors  used  in  motor  cars  and  aero¬ 
planes,  and  what  is  achieved  now  by  the  transmission  of 
electrical  power.  But  I  leave  these  lines  as  they  were  written, 
as  a  testimony  of  the  way  in  which  the  conquest  of  air  began, 
and  of  the  part  taken  in  it  by  the  French  small  industry. 


320 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


the  extension  of  the  small  industries,  and  to 
know  their  importance,  in  comparison  with  the 
great  industry.  Fortunately  enough,  a  general 
census  of  the  French  industries  was  made  in  the 
year  1896  ;  its  results  have  been  published  in  full, 
under  the  title  of  Resultats  statistiques  du  recense - 
ment  des  industries  et  des  professions ,  and  in  the 
fourth  volume  of  this  capital  work  we  find 
an  excellent  summing  up  of  the  main  results 
of  the  census,  written  by  M.  Lucien  March.  I 
give  a  resume  of  these  results  in  the  Appendix, 
as  otherwise  I  should  have  been  compelled,  in 
speaking  of  the  distribution  of  great  and  small 
industry  in  France,  to  repeat  very  much  what  I 
have  said  in  this  same  chapter,  speaking  of  the 
United  Kingdom.  There  is  so  much  in  common 
in  the  distribution  of  small  and  large  factories 
in  the  different  branches  of  industry  in  both 
countries  that  it  would  have  been  a  tedious 
repetition.  So  I  give  here  only  the  main  items 
and  refer  the  reader  to  Appendix  W. 

The  general  distribution  of  the  workers’ 
population  in  large,  middle-sized,  and  small 
factories  in  the  year  1S96  was  as  follows.  First 
of  all  there  was  the  great  division  of  independent 
artisans  who  worked  single-handed,  and  working 
men  and  women  who  were  without  permanent 
employment  on  the  day  of  the  census.  Part  of 
this  large  division  belongs  to  agriculture  ;  but, 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


321 


after  having  deducted  the  agricultural  establish¬ 
ments,  M.  March  arrives  at  the  figures  of  483,000 
establishments  belonging  to  this  category  in 
industry,  and  1,047,000  persons  of  both  sexes 
working  in  these  establishments,  or  temporarily 
attached  to  some  industrial  establishment.  To 
these  we  must  add  37,705  industrial  establish¬ 
ments,  where  no  hired  workmen  are  employed, 
but  the  head  of  the  establishment  works  with 
the  aid  of  the  members  of  his  own  family.  We 
have  thus,  in  these  two  divisions,  about  520,700 
establishments  and  1,084,700  persons  which  I 
inscribe  in  the  following  table  under  the  head  of 
“  No  hired  operatives.”  The  table  then  appears 
as  follows  : — 


Number  of 
establishments. 

Number  of  opera¬ 
tives  and  clerks. 

No  hired  operatives 

520,700 

1,084,700 

From  1  to  10  employees 
From  11  to  50  „ 

From  51  to  100  „ 

From  101  to  500  „ 

From  501  to  1000  „ 

More  than  1000  „ 

539,449 

28,626 

3,865 

3,145 

295 

149 

1,134,700 

585,000 

268,000 

616,000 

195,000 

313,000 

Total  (with  first  division) . 

575,529 

3,111,700 

1,096,229 

4,196,400 

These  figures  speak  for  themselves  and  show 
what  an  immense  importance  the  small  industry 

11 


322 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


has  in  France.  More  details,  showing  the  dis¬ 
tribution  of  the  great,  middle-sized  and  small 
industry  in  different  branches  will  be  found  in 
the  Appendix,  and  there  the  reader  will  also  see 
what  a  striking  resemblance  is  offered  under  this 
aspect  by  the  industry  of  France  and  that  of  the 
United  Kingdom.  In  the  next  chapter  it  will 
be  seen  from  a  similar  census  that  Germany 
stands  in  absolutely  the  same  position. 

It  would  have  been  very  interesting  to  compare 
the  present  distribution  of  industries  in  France 
with  what  it  was  previously.  But  M.  Lucien 
March  tells  us  that  “  no  statistics  previous  to 
1896  have  given  us  a  knowledge  of  that  distribu¬ 
tion, .”  Still,  an  inquest  made  between  1840  and 
1845,  and  which  M.  March  considers  “  very 
complete  for  the  more  important  establishments 
which  employed  more  than  fifty  workmen,”  was 
worked  out  by  him,  and  he  found  that  such 
establishments  numbered  3,300  in  1840  ;  in 
1896  they  had  already  attained  the  number  of 
7,400,  and  they  occupied  more  than  fifty-five  per 
cent,  of  all  the  workpeople  employed  in  industry. 
As  to  the  establishments  which  employed  more 
than  500  persons  and  which  numbered  133  in 
1840  (six  per  cent,  of  all  the  workpeople),  they 
attained  the  number  of  444  in  1896,  and  sixteen 
per  cent,  of  all  the  workpeople  were  employed  in 
them. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


323 


The  conclusion  to  be  drawn  from  these  facts 
is  thus  worded  by  M.  March  :  “  To  sum  up,  dur¬ 
ing  the  last  fifty  years  a  notable  concentration 
of  the  factories  took  place  in  the  big  establish¬ 
ments  ;  but  the  just-mentioned  results,  supported 
by  the  statistics  of  the  patents,  permit  us 
to  recognise  that  this  concentration  does  not 
; prevent  the  maintenance  of  a  mass  of  small 
enterprises,  the  average  sizes  of  which  increase 
but  very  slowly .”  This  last  is,  in  fact,  what  we 
have  just  seen  from  our  brief  sketch  for  the 
United  Kingdom,  and  we  can  only  ask  ourselves 
whether — such  being  the  facts — the  word  “  con¬ 
centration  ”  is  well  chosen.  What  we  see  in 
reality  is,  the  appearance,  in  some  branches  of 
industry ,  of  a  certain  number  of  large  establish¬ 
ments,  and  especially  of  middle-sized  factories. 
But  this  does  not  prevent  in  the  least  that  very 
great  numbers  of  small  factories  should  continue 
to  exist,  either  in  other  branches,  or  in  the  very 
same  branches  where  large  factories  have  appeared 
(the  textiles,  work  in  metal),  or  in  branches 
connected  with  the  main  ones,  which  take  their 
origin  in  these  main  ones,  as  the  industry  of 
clothing  takes  its  origin  from  that  of  the  textiles. 

This  is  the  only  conclusion  which  a  serious 
analysis  permits  us  to  draw  from  the  facts 
brought  to  light  by  the  census  of  1836  and  sub¬ 
sequent  observations.  As  to  the  large  deduc- 


324 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES. 


tions  about  “  concentration  ”  made  by  certain 
economists,  they  are  mere  hypotheses — useful,  of 
course,  for  stimulating  research,  but  becoming 
quite  noxious  when  they  are  represented  as 
economical  laws ,  when  in  reality  they  are  not 
confirmed  at  all  by  the  testimony  of  carefully 
observed  facts. 


CHAPTER  VII. 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND  INDUSTRIAL 

villages  ( continued ). 

Petty  trades  in  Germany  :  Discussions  upon  the  subject  and 
conclusions  arrived  at — Results  of  the  census  taken  in 
1882,  1895,  and  1907 — Petty  trades  in  Russia — Conclusions. 

Petty  Trades  in  Germany. 

THE  various  industries  which  still  have 
retained  in  Germany  the  characters  of 
petty  and  domestic  trades  have  been  the  sub¬ 
ject  of  many  exhaustive  explorations,  especially 
by  A.  M.  Thun  and  Prof.  Issaieff,  on  behalf 
of  the  Russian  Petty  Trades  Commission, 
Emanuel  Hans  Sax,  Paul  Voigt,  and  very 
many  others.  By  this  time  the  subject  has  a 
bulky  literature,  and  such  impressive  and 
suggestive  pictures  have  been  drawn  from 
life  for  different  regions  and  trades  that  I  felt 
tempted  to  sum  up  these  life-true  descrip¬ 
tions.  However,  as  in  such  a  summary  I 
should  have  to  repeat  much  of  what  has  already 
been  said  and  illustrated  in  the  preceding  chap- 


326 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


ter,  it  will  probably  more  interest  the  general 
reader  to  know  something  about  the  con¬ 
clusions  which  can  be  drawn  from  the  works 
of  the  German  investigators,*  and  to  know 
the  conclusions  that  may  be  drawn  from  the 
three  censuses  of  industries  which  have  been 
made  in  Germany  in  the  years  1882,  1895,  and 
1907.  This  is  what  I  am  going  to  do. 

Unhappily,  the  discussion  upon  this  important 
subject  has  often  taken  in  Germany  a  passionate 
and  even  a  personally  aggressive  character.! 
On  the  one  hand  the  ultra-conservative  (ele¬ 
ments  of  German  politics  tried,  and  succeeded 
to  some  extent,  in  making  of  the  petty  trades 
and  the  domestic  industries  an  arm  for  securing 
a  return  to  the  “  olden  good  times.”  They 
even  passed  a  law  intended  to  prepare  a  re- 
introduction  of  the  old-fashioned,  closed  and 
patriarchal  corporations  which  could  be  placed 
under  the  close  supervision  and  tutorship  of 
the  State,  and  they  saw  in  such  a  law  a  weapon 

*  The  remarks  of  Prof.  Issaieff — a  thorough  investigator  of 
petty  trades  in  Russia,  Germany  and  France — (see  Works  of 
the  Commission  for  the  Study  of  Petty  Trades  in  Russia  (Russian), 
St.  Petersburg,  1879-1887,  vol.  i.)  were  for  me  a  valuable  guide 
when  I  prepared  the  first  edition  of  this  book.  Since  that  time 
the  two  industrial  censuses  of  1895  and  1907  have  yielded  such 
a  valuable  material,  that  there  are  quite  a  number  of  German 
works  which  came  to  the  same  conclusions.  I  shall  mention 
them  further  on. 

t  See  K.  Buecher’s  Preface  to  the  TJ ntersuchung&n  iihvr  die 
Lage  des  Handwerks  in  Deutschland ,  vol.  iv. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


327 


against  social  democracy.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  social  democrats,  justly  opposed  to  such 
measures,  but  themselves  inclined,  in  their  turn, 
to  take  too  abstract  a  view  of  economical  ques¬ 
tions,  bitterly  attack  all  those  who  do  not 
merely  repeat  the  stereotyped  phrases  to  the 
effect  that  “  the  petty  trades  are  in  decay,” 
and  “  the  sooner  they  disappear  the  better,” 
as  they  will  give  room  to  capitalist  centralisa¬ 
tion,  which,  according  to  the  social  democratic 
creed,  “  will  soon  achieve  its  own  ruin.”  In 
this  dislike  of  the  small  industries  they  are, 
of  course,  at  one  with  the  economists  of  the 
orthodox  school,  whom  they  combat  on  nearly 
all  other  points.* 

*  The  foundation  for  this  creed  is  contained  in  one  of  the 
concluding  chapters  of  Marx’s  Kapital  (the  last  but  one),  in 
which  the  author  spoke  of  the  concentration  of  capital  and  saw 
in  it  the  “  fatality  of  a  natural  law.”  In  the  “  forties,”  this 
idea  of  “  concentration  of  capital,”  originated  from  what  was 
going  on  in  the  textile  industries,  was  continually  recurring  in 
the  writings  of  all  the  French  socialists,  especially  Considerant, 
and  their  German  followers,  and  it  was  used  by  them  as  an 
argument  in  favour  of  the  necessity  of  a  social  revolution. 
But  Marx  was  too  much  of  a  thinker  that  he  should  not  have 
taken  notice  of  the  subsequent  developments  of  industrial  life, 
which  were  not  foreseen  in  1848 ;  if  he  had  lived  now,  he  surely 
would  not  have  shut  his  eyes  to  the  formidable  growth  of  the 
numbers  of  small  capitalists  and  to  the  middle-class  fortunes 
which  are  made  in  a  thousand  ways  under  the  shadow  of  the 
modern  “  millionaires.”  Very  likely  he  would  have  noticed 
also  the  extreme  slowness  with  which  the  wrecking  of  small 
industries  goes  on — a  slowness  which  could  not  be  predicted 
fifty  or  forty  years  ago,  because  no  one  could  foresee  at  that 
time  the  facilities  which  have  been  offered  since  for  transport. 


328 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


Under  such  conditions,  the  polemics  about 
the  petty  trades  and  the  domestic  industries  are 
evidently  doomed  to  remain  most  unproductive. 
However,  it  is  pleasant  to  see  that  a  consider¬ 
able  amount  of  most  conscientious  work  has 
been  made  for  the  investigation  of  the  petty 
trades  in  Germany  ;  and,  by  the  side  of  such 
monographs,  from  which  nothing  can.  be 
learned  but  that  the  petty  trades’  workers 
are  in  a  miserable  condition,  and  nothing 
whatever  can  be  gathered  to  explain  why  these 
workers  prefer  their  conditions  to  those  of 

factory  hands — there  is  no  lack  of  very  de¬ 

tailed  monographs  (such  as  those  of  Thun, 
Em.  H.  Sax,  Paul  Voigt  on  the  Berlin  cabinet¬ 
makers,  etc.),  in  which  one  sees  the  whole  of 

the  life  of  these  classes  of  workers,  the  diffi¬ 

culties  which  they  have  to  cope  with,  and  the 
technical  conditions  of  the  trade,  and  finds  all 
the  elements  for  an  independent  judgment 
upon  the  matter. 

It  is  evident  that  a  number  of  petty  trades  are 

the  growing  variety  of  demand,  nor  the  cheap  means  which  are 
now  in  use  for  the  supply  of  motive  power  in  small  quantities. 
Being  a  thinker,  he  would  have  studied  these  facts,  and  very 
probably  he  would  have  mitigated  the  absoluteness  of  his 
earlier  formulae,  as  in  fact  he  did  once  with  regard  to  the  village 
community  in  Russia.  It  would  be  most  desirable  that  his 
followers  should  rely  less  upon  abstract  formulae — easy  as  they 
may  be  as  watchwords  in  political  struggles — and  try  to  imitate 
their  teacher  in  his  analysis  of  concrete  economical  phenomena. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


329 


already  now  doomed  to  disappear  ;  but  there 
are  others,  on  the  contrary,  which  are  endowed 
with  a  great  vitality,  and  all  chances  are  in 
favour  of  their  continuing  to  exist  and  to 
take  a  further  development  for  many  years  to 
come.  In  the  fabrication  of  such  textiles  as 
are  woven  by  millions  of  yards,  and  can  be  best 
produced  with  the  aid  of  a  complicated  machin¬ 
ery,  the  competition  of  the  hand-loom  against 
the  power-loom  is  evidently  nothing  but  a 
survival,  which  may  be  maintained  for  some 
time  by  certain  local  conditions,  but  finally 
must  die  away. 

The  same  is  true  with  regard  to  many  branches 
of  the  iron  industries,  hardware  fabrication, 
pottery,  and  so  on.  But  wherever  the  direct 
intervention  of  taste  and  inventiveness  are 
required,  wherever  new  patterns  of  goods 
requiring  a  continual  renewal  of  machinery  and 
tools  must  continually  be  introduced  in  order 
to  feed  the  demand,  as  is  the  case  with  all  fancy 
textiles,  even  though  they  be  fabricated  to 
supply  the  millions  ;  wherever  a  great  variety  of 
goods  and  the  uninterrupted  invention  of  ner/ 
ones  goes  on,  as  is  the  case  in  the  toy  trade, 
in  instrument  making,  watch-making,  bicycle 
making,  and  so  on  ;  and  finally,  wherever  the 
artistic  feeling  of  the  individual  worker  makes 
the  best  part  of  his  goods,  as  is  the  case  in 


330 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


hundreds  of  branches  of  small  articles  of  luxury, 
there  is  a  wide  field  for  petty  trades,  rural 
workshops,  domestic  industries,  and  the  like. 
More  fresh  air,  more  ideas,  more  general  con¬ 
ceptions,  and  more  co-operation  are  evidently 
required  in  those  industries.  But  where  the 
spirit  of  initiative  has  been  awakened  in  one 
way  or  another,  we  see  the  petty  industries 
taking  a  new  development  in  Germany,  as  we 
have  just  seen  that  being  done  in  France. 

Now,  in  nearly  all  the  petty  trades  in  Ger¬ 
many,  the  position  of  the  workers  is  unani¬ 
mously  described  as  most  miserable,  and  the 
many  admirers  of  centralisation  which  we  find 
in  Germany  always  insist  upon  this  misery 
in  order  to  predict,  and  to  call  for,  the  dis¬ 
appearance  of  “  those  mediaeval  survivals  ” 
which  “  capitalist  centralisation  ”  must  supplant 
for  the  benefit  of  the  worker.  The  reality  is, 
however,  that  when  we  compare  the  miserable 
conditions  of  the  workers  in  the  petty  trades 
with  the  conditions  of  the  wage  workers  in 
the  factories,  in  the  same  regions  and  in  the 
same  trades,  we  see  that  the  very  same  misery 
prevails  among  the  factory  workers.  They 
live  upon  wages  of  from  nine  to  eleven  shillings 
a  week,  in  town  slums  instead  of  the  country. 
They  work  eleven  hours  a  day,  and  they  also 
are  subject  to  the  extra  misery  thrown  upon 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  331 

them  during  the  frequently  recurring  crises. 
It  is  only  after  they  have  undergone  all  sorts 
of  sufferings  in  their  struggles  against  their 
employers  that  some  factory  workers  succeed, 
more  or  less,  here  and  there,  to  wrest  from 
their  employers  a  “  living  wage 55 — and  this 
again  only  in  certain  trades. 

To  welcome  all  these  sufferings,  seeing  in 
them  the  action  of  a  “  natural  law  ”  and  a 
necessary  step  towards  the  necessary  concen¬ 
tration  of  industry,  would  be  simply  absurd. 
While  to  maintain  that  the  pauperisation  of  all 
workers  and  the  wreckage  of  all  village  indus¬ 
tries  are  a  necessary  step  towards  a  higher  form 
of  industrial  organisation  would  be,  not  only  to 
affirm  much  more  than  one  is  entitled  to  affirm 
under  the  present  imperfect  state  of  economical 
knowledge,  but  to  show  an  absolute  want  of 
comprehension  of  the  sense  of  both  natural  and 
economic  laws.  Everyone,  on  the  contrary, 
who  has  studied  the  question  of  the  growth  of 
great  industries  on  its  own  merits,  will  un¬ 
doubtedly  agree  with  Thorold  Rogers,  who 
considered  the  sufferings  inflicted  upon  the 
labouring  classes  for  that  purpose  as  having 
been  of  no  necessity  whatever ,  and  simply  having 
been  inflicted  to  suit  the  temporary  interests  of 
the  few — by  no  means  those  of  the  nation.* 

*  The  Economic  Interpretation  of  History. 


332 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


Moreover,  everyone  knows  to  what  extent 
the  labour  of  children  and  girls  is  resorted  to, 
even  in  the  most  prosperous  factories — even  in 
this  country  which  stands  foremost  in  industrial 
development.  Some  figures  relative  to  this 
subject  were  given  in  the  preceding  chapter. 
And  this  fact  is  not  an  accident  which  might 
be  easily  removed,  as  Maurice  Block — a  great 
admirer,  of  course,  of  the  factory  system — 
tries  to  represent  it.*  The  low  wages  paid  to 
children  and  youths  are  now  one  of  the  neces¬ 
sary  elements  in  the  cheapness  of  the  factory 
produced  textiles,  and,  consequently,  of  the 
very  competition  of  the  factory  with  the  petty 
trades.  I  have  mentioned  besides,  whilst  speak¬ 
ing  of  France,  what  are  the  effects  of  “  concen¬ 
trated  5  5  industries  upon  village  life  ;  and  in 
Thun’s  work,  and  in  many  others  as  well,  one 
may  find  enough  of  ghastly  instances  of  what 
are  the  effects  of  accumulations  of  girls  in  the 
factories.  To  idealise  the  modern  factory,  in 
order  to  depreciate  the  so-called  “  mediaeval  ” 
forms  of  the  small  industries,  is  consequently — 
to  say  the  least — as  unreasonable  as  to  idealise 
the  latter  and  try  to  bring  mankind  back  to 
isolated  home-spinning  and  home-weaving  in 
every  peasant  house. 

*  Les  Progres  de  la  Science  iconomigue  depuis  Adam  Smith , 
Paris,  I8S0,  t.  i.,  pp.  460,  461. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  333 

One  fact  dominates  all  the  investigations 
which  have  been  made  into  the  conditions  of  the 
small  industries.  We  find  it  in  Germany,  as 
well  as  in  France  or  in  Russia.  In  an  immense 
number  of  trades  it  is  not  the  superiority  of 
the  technical  organisation  of  the  trade  in  a 
factory,  nor  the  economies  realised  on  the 
prime-motor,  which  militate  against  the  small 
industry  in  favour  of  the  factories,  but  the 
more  advantageous  conditions  for  selling  the 
produce  and  for  buying  the  raw  produce  which 
are  at  the  disposal  of  big  concerns.  Wherever 
this  difficulty  has  been  overcome,  either  by 
means  of  association,  or  in  consequence  of  a 
market  being  secured  for  the  sale  of  the  pro¬ 
duce,  it  has  always  been  found — first,  that  the 
conditions  of  the  workers  or  artisans  immedi¬ 
ately  improved  ;  and  next,  that  a  rapid  prog¬ 
ress  was  realised  in  the  technical  aspects  of 
the  respective  industries.  New  processes  were 
introduced  to  improve  the  produce  or  to  in¬ 
crease  the  rapidity  of  its  fabrication  ;  new 
machine-tools  were  invented  ;  or  new  motors 
were  resorted  to ;  or  the  trade  was  reorganised 
so  as  to  diminish  the  costs  of  production. 

On  the  contrary,  wherever  the  helpless, 
isolated  artisans  and  workers  continue  to  re¬ 
main  at  the  mercy  of  the  wholesale  buyers, 
who  always  —  since  Adam  Smith’s  time  — 


334 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


“  openly  or  tacitly  ”  agree  to  act  as  one  man 
to  bring  down  the  prices  almost  to  a  starvation 
level — and  such  is  the  case  for  the  immense 
number  of  the  small  and  village  industries — 
their  condition  is  so  bad  that  only  the  longing 
of  the  workers  after  a  certain  relative  independ¬ 
ence,  and  their  knowledge  of  what  awaits  them 
in  the  factory,  prevent  them  from  joining  the 
ranks  of  the  factory  hands.  Knowing  that  in 
most  cases  the  advent  of  the  factory  would 
mean  no  work  at  all  for  most  men,  and  the 
taking  of  the  children  and  girls  to  the  factory, 
they  do  the  utmost  to  prevent  it  from  appear¬ 
ing  at  all  in  the  village. 

As  to  combinations  in  the  villages,  co¬ 
operation  and  the  like,  one  must  never  forget 
how  jealously  the  German,  the  French,  the 
Russian  and  the  Austrian  Governments  have 
hitherto  prevented  the  workers,  and  especially 
the  village  workers,  from  entering  into  any  sort 
of  combination  for  economical  purposes.  In 
France  the  peasant  syndicates  were  permitted 
only  by  the  law  of  1884.  To  keep  the  peasant 
at  the  lowest  possible  level,  by  means  of  taxa¬ 
tion,  serfdom,  and  the  like,  has  been,  and  is 
still,  the  policy  of  most  continental  States.  It 
was  only  in  1876  that  some  extension  of  the 
association  rights  was  granted  in  Germany, 
and  even  now  a  mere  co-operative  association 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  335 

for  the  sale  of  the  artisans’  work  is  soon  re¬ 
ported  as  a  “  political  association  ”  and  sub¬ 
mitted  as  such  to  the  usual  limitations,  such  as 
the  exclusion  of  women  and  the  like  *  A  strik¬ 
ing  example  of  that  policy  as  regards  a  village 
association  was  given  by  Prof.  Issaieff,  who 
also  mentioned  the  severe  measures  taken  by 
the  wholesale  buyers  in  the  toy  trade  to  prevent 
the  workers  from  entering  into  direct  intercourse 
with  foreign  buyers. 

When  one  examines  with  more  than  a  super¬ 
ficial  attention  the  life  of  the  small  industries 
and  their  struggles  for  life,  one  sees  that  when 
they  perish,  they  perish — not  because  “  an 
economy  can  be  realised  by  using  a  hundred 
horse-power  motor,  instead  of  a  hundred  small 
motors  ” — this  inconveniency  never  fails  to 
be  mentioned,  although  it  is  easily  obviated  in 
Sheffield,  in  Paris,  and  many  other  places  by 
hiring  workshops  with  wheel-power,  supplied 
by  a  central  machine,  and,  still  more,  as  was 
so  truly  observed  by  Prof.  W.  Unwin,  by  the 
electric  transmission  of  power.  They  do  not 
perish  because  a  substantial  economy  can  be 
realised  in  the  factory  production — in  many  more 
cases  than  is  usually  supposed,  the  fact  is  even 

*  See  the  discussions  in  the  Reichstag  in  January,  1909,  on 
the  Polish  Syndicates,  and  the  application  that  is  made  to 
them  of  the  paragraph  of  the  law  of  the  associations  relative 
to  language  ( Sprachenparagraph ). 


336 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


the  reverse — but  because  the  capitalist  who 
establishes  a  factory  emancipates  himself  from 
the  wholesale  and  retail  dealers  in  raw  materials ; 
and  especially,  because  he  emancipates  himself 
from  the  buyers  of  his  produce  and  can  deal 
directly  with  the  wholesale  buyer  and  exporter  ; 
or  else  he  concentrates  in  one  concern  the 
different  stages  of  fabrication  of  a  given  pro¬ 
duce.  The  pages  which  Schulze-Gawernitz  gave 
to  the  organisation  of  the  cotton  industry  in 
England,  and  to  the  difficulties  which  the 
German  cotton-mill  owners  had  to  contend 
with,  so  long  as  they  were  dependent  upon 
Liverpool  for  raw  cotton,  are  most  instructive 
in  this  direction.  And  what  characterises  the 
cotton  trade  prevails  in  all  other  industries  as 
well. 

If  the  Sheffield  cutlers  who  now  work  in 
their  tiny  workshops,  in  one  of  the  above- 
mentioned  buildings  supplied  with  wheel-power, 
were  incorporated  in  one  big  factory,  the  chief 
advantage  which  would  be  realised  in  the 
factory  would  not  be  an  economy  in  the  costs 
of  production,  in  comparison  to  the  quality 
of  the  produce  ;  with  a  shareholders’  company 
the  costs  might  even  increase.  And  yet  the 
profits  (including  wages)  probably  would  be 
greater  than  the  aggregate  earnings  of  the 
workers,  in  consequence  of  the  reduced  costs 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  337 

of  purchase  of  iron  and  coal,  and  the  facilities 
for  the  sale  of  the  produce.  The  great  concern 
would  thus  find  its  advantages  not  in  such 
factors  as  are  imposed  by  the  technical  neces¬ 
sities  of  the  trade  at  the  time  being,  but  in 
such  factors  as  could  be  eliminated  by  co¬ 
operative  organisation.  All  these  are  elemen¬ 
tary  notions  among  practical  men. 

It  hardly  need  be  added  that  a  further  advan¬ 
tage  which  the  factory  owner  has  is,  that  he  can 
find  a  sale  even  for  produce  of  the  most  in¬ 
ferior  quality,  provided  there  is  a  considerable 
quantity  of  it  to  be  sold.  All  those  who  are 
acquainted  with  commerce  know,  indeed,  what 
an  immense  bulk  of  the  world’s  trade  consists 
of  “  shoddy,”  patraque ,  44  Red  Indians’  blankets,” 
and  the  like,  shipped  to  distant  countries. 
Whole  cities — we  just  saw — produce  nothing 
but  “  shoddy.” 

Altogether,  it  may  be  taken  as  one  of  the 
fundamental  facts  of  the  economical  life  of\ 
Europe  that  the  defeat  of  a  number  of  small  \ 
trades,  artisan  work  and  domestic  industries, 
came  through  their  being  incapable  of  organis¬ 
ing  the  sale  of  their  produce — not  from  the 
production  itself.  The  same  thing  recurs  .at 
every  page  of  economical  history.  The  in- 
capacitv  of  organising  the  sale,  without  being 
enslaved  by  the  merchant,  was  the  leading 


338  SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


feature  of  the  Mediaeval  cities,  which  gradually 
fell  under  the  economical  and  political  yoke 
of  the  Guild-Merchant,  simply  because  they 
were  not  able  to  maintain  the  sale  of  their  manu¬ 
factures  by  the  community  as  a  ivhole,  or  to 
organise  the  sale  of  a  new  produce  in  the  interest 
of  the  community.  When  the  markets  for  such 
commodities  came  to  be  Asia  on  the  one  side, 
and  the  New  World  on  the  other  side,  such 
was  fatally  the  case  ;  since  commerce  had 
ceased  to  be  communal ,  and  had  become  in¬ 
dividual,  the  cities  became  a  prey  for  the 
rivalries  of  the  chief  merchant  families. 

Even  nowadays,  when  we  see  the  co-operative 
societies  beginning  to  succeed  in  their  pro¬ 
ductive  workshops,  while  fifty  years  ago  they 
invariably  failed  in  their  capacity  of  pro¬ 
ducers,  we  may  conclude  that  the  cause  of 
their  previous  failures  was  not  in  their  in¬ 
capacity  of  properly  and  economically  organis¬ 
ing  production ,  but  in  their  inability  of  acting 
as  sellers  and  exporters  of  the  produce  they 
had  fabricated.  Their  present  successes,  on 
the  contrary,  are  fully  accounted  for  by  the 
network  of  distributive  societies  which  they 
have  at  their  command.  The  sale  has  been 
simplified,  and  production  has  been  rendered 
possible  by  first  organising  the  market . 


Such  are  a  few  conclusions  which  may  be 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  339 

drawn  from  a  study  of  the  small  industries  in 
Germany  and  elsewhere.  And  it  may  be 
safely  said,  with  regard  to  Germany,  that  if 
measures  are  not  taken  for  driving  the  peasants 
from  the  land  on  the  same  scale  as  they  have 
been  taken  in  this  country  ;  if,  on  the  con¬ 
trary,  the  numbers  of  small  landholders  multi¬ 
ply,  they  necessarily  will  turn  to  various  small 
trades,  in  addition  to  agriculture,  as  they  have 
done,  and  are  doing,  in  France.  Every  step 
that  may  be  taken,  either  for  awakening  intel¬ 
lectual  life  in  the  villages,  or  for  assuring  the 
peasants’  or  the  country’s  rights  upon  the 
land,  will  necessarily  further  the  growth  of 
industries  in  the  villages. 

In  this  light  it  is  extremely  interesting  to 
see  the  figures  as  to  the  distribution  of  the 
German  industries  into  a  small,  middle-sized, 
and  great  industry,  which  are  given  by  three 
industrial  censuses  taken  during  the  last  thirty 
years.  But  for  these  figures  I  refer  the  reader 
to  the  Appendix.* 

Petty  Trades  in  other  Countries . 

If  it  were  worth  extending  our  inquiry  to 
other  countries,  we  should  find  a  vast  field 
for  most  interesting  observations  in  Switzer¬ 
land.  There  we  should  see  the  same  vitality 

*  See  Appendix  X. 


340 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


in  a  variety  of  petty  industries,  and  we  could 
mention  what  has  been  done  in  the  different 
cantons  for  maintaining  the  small  trades  by 
three  different  sets  of  measures  :  the  extension 
of  co-operation  ;  a  wide  extension  of  technical 
education  in  the  schools  and  the  introduction 
of  new  branches  of  semi-artistic  production  in 
different  parts  of  the  country  ;  and  the  supply 
of  cheap  motive  power  in  the  houses  byhneans  of 
a  hydraulic  or  an  electric  transmission  of  power 
borrowed  from  the  waterfalls.  A  separate 
book  of  the  greatest  interest  and  value  could 
be  written  on  this  subject,  especially  on  the 
impulse  given  to  a  number  of  petty  trades,  old 
and  new,  by  means  of  a  cheap  supply  of  motive 
power.  Such  a  book  would  also  offer  a  great 
interest  in  that  it  would  show  to  what  an  ex¬ 
tent  that  mingling  together  of  agriculture  with 
industry,  which  I  described  in  the  first  edition 
of  this  book  as  “  the  factory  amidst  the  fields,” 
has  progressed  of  late  in  Switzerland.  It  strikes 
at  the  present  time  even  the  casual  traveller.* 
Belgium  would  offer  an  equal  interest.  Bel¬ 
gium  is  certainly  a  country  of  centralised 
industry,  and  a  country  in  which  the  pro¬ 
ductivity  of  the  worker  stands  at  a  high  level, 
the  average  annual  productivity  of  each  in¬ 
dustrial  workman — men,  women,  and  children 


*  See  Appendix  Y. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


341 


— attaining  now  the  high  figure  of  at  least  £250 
per  head.  Coal  mines  in  which  more  than  a 
thousand  workers  are  employed  are  numerous, 
and  there  is  a  fair  number  of  textile  factories 
in  each  of  which  from  300  to  700  workers  are 
occupied.  And  yet,  if  we  exclude  from  the 
industrial  workers’  population  of  Belgium,  which 
numbered  823,920  persons  in  1896  (1,102,240 
with  the  clerks,  travellers,  supervisors  and  so 
on),  the  116,300  workpeople  who  are  employed 
in  the  coal  mines,  and  nearly  165,000  artisans 
working  single  or  with  the  aid  of  their  families, 
we  find  that  out  of  the  remaining  565,200 
workers  very  nearly  one-half — that  is,  270,200 
persons — work  in  establishments  in  which  less 
than  fifty  persons  are  employed,  while  95,000 
persons  out  of  these  last  are  employed  in  54,500 
workshops,  which  thus  have  an  average  of  less 
than  three  workers  per  workshop.*  We  may 
thus  say  that — taking  the  mines  out  of  account 

*  Here  is  the  distribution  of  workpeople  in  all  the  industries, 
according  to  the  Annuaire  Statistique  for  the  year  1909  :  Arti¬ 
sans  working  single-handed  or  with  the  aid  of  their  families, 
165,000  establishments  ;  very  small  industry,  from  one  to  four 
workpeople,  54,000  establishments,  95,000  workpeople  ;  small 
industry,  from  five  to  forty-nine  workpeople  per  factory, 
14,800  establishments,  177,000  employees  ;  middle-sized  and 
great  industry,  from  50  to  499  workpeople  per  factory,  1,500 
establishments,  250,000  employees  ;  very  great  industry,  above 
500  workpeople  per  factory,  200  establishments,  160,000  em¬ 
ployees.  Total,  236,000  employers  great  and  small ;  or  71,000 
employers  out  of  7,000,000  inhabitants  if  we  do  not  count  the 
independent  artisans. 


342 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


— more  than  one-sixth  part  of  the  Belgian 
industrial  workers  are  employed  in  small  work¬ 
shops  which  have,  on  the  average,  less  than  three 
workers  each,  besides  the  master,  and  that 
four-tenths  of  all  the  work-people  are  em¬ 
ployed  in  factories  and  workshops  having  on 
the  average  less  than  thirteen  work-people  each.* 

What  is  still  more  remarkable  is,  that  the 
number  of  small  workshops,  in  which  from 
one  to  four  aids  only  are  employed  by  the 
master,  attains  the  considerable  figure  of  1,867 
(2,293  in  1880)  in  the  textile  industries,  not¬ 
withstanding  the  high  concentration  of  a  certain 
portion  *(*  of  these  industries.  As  to  the 
machinery  works  and  hardware  trades,  the 
small  workshops  in  which  the  master  works 
with  from  two  to  four  assistants  or  journeymen 
are  very  numerous  (more  than  13,300),  to  say 
nothing  of  the  gun  trade  which  is  a  petty  trade 
' par  excellence ,  and  the  furniture  trade  which 

*  When  shall  we  have  for  the  United  Kingdom  a  census 
as  complete  as  we  have  it  for  France,  Germany,  and  Belgium  ? 
that  is,  a  census  in  which  the  employed  and  the  employers  will 
be  counted  separately — instead  of  throwing  into  one  heap  the 
owner  of  the  factory,  the  managers,  the  engineers,  and  the 
workers — and  their  distribution  in  factories  of  different  sizes 
will  be  given. 

f  Textile  I ndustries  :  Artisans  working  single  or  with  the 
aid  of  their  families,  1,437  ;  from  one  to  four  workmen,  430 
establishments,  949  work-people  ;  from  five  to  forty-nine  work¬ 
people,  774  establishments,  14,051  workers ;  above  fifty, 
379  establishments,  66,103  workers. 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  343 

has  lately  taken  a  great  development.  A  highly 
concentrated  industry,  and  a  high  productivity, 
as  well  as  a  considerable  export  trade,  which 
all  testify  to  a  high  industrial  development  of 
the  country,  thus  go  hand  in  hand  with  a  high 
development  of  the  domestic  trades  and  small 
industries  altogether. 

It  hardly  need  be  said  that  in  Austria,  Hun¬ 
gary,  Italy,  and  even  the  United  States,  the 
petty  trades  occupy  a  prominent  position,  and 
play  in  the  sum  total  of  industrial  activity  an 
even  much  greater  part  than  in  France,  Belgium, 
or  Germany.  But  it  is  especially  in  Russia  that 
we  can  fully  appreciate  the  importance  of  the 
rural  industries  and  the  terrible  sufferings 
which  will  be  quite  uselessly  inflicted  on  the 
population,  if  the  policy  of  the  State  is  going  to 
be  now  the  policy  advocated  by  a  number  of 
landlords  and  factory-owners — namely,  if  the 
State  throws  its  tremendous  weight  in  favour  of 
a  pauperisation  of  the  peasants  and  an  artificial 
annihilation  of  the  rural  trades,  in  order  to  create 
a  centralised  great  industry.* 

The  most  exhaustive  inquiries  into  the  present 
state,  the  growth,  the  technical  development  of 

*  Since  1907  the  Russian  Government  has  inaugurated  this 
policy,  and  has  begun  to  destroy  by  violence  the  village  com¬ 
munity  in  the  interest  of  the  landlord  and  the  protected  indus¬ 
tries. 


344 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


the  rural  industries,  and  the  difficulties  they  have 
to  contend  with,  have  been  made  in  Russia.  A 
house-to-house  inquiry  which  embraces  nearly 
1,000,000  peasants’  houses  has  been  made  in 
various  provinces  of  Russia,  and  its  results 
already  represent  450  volumes,  printed  by 
different  county  councils  (Zemstvos).  Besides, 
in  the  fifteen  volumes  published  by  the  Petty 
Trades  Committee,  and  still  more  in  the  pub¬ 
lications  of  the  Moscow  Statistical  Committee, 
and  of  many  provincial  assemblies,  we  find 
exhaustive  lists  giving  the  name  of  each  worker, 
the  extent  and  the  state  of  his  fields,  his  live 
stock,  the  value  of  his  agricultural  and  in¬ 
dustrial  production,  his  earnings  from  both 
sources,  and  his  yearly  budget  ;  while  hundreds 
of  separate  trades  have  been  described  in 
separate  monographs  from  the  technical,  eco¬ 
nomical,  and  sanitary  points  of  view. 

The  results  obtained  from  these  inquiries  were 
really  imposing,  as  it  appeared  that  out  of  the 
80  or  90  million  population  of  European  Russia 
proper,  no  less  than  7,500,000  persons  were 
engaged  in  the  domestic  trades,  and  that  their 
production  reached,  at  the  lowest  estimate, 
more  than  £150,000,000,  and  most  probably 
£200,000,000  (2,000,000,000  roubles)  every  year.* 

*  It  appears  from  the  house-to-house  inquiry,  which  embodies 
855,000  workers,  that  the  yearly  value  of  the  produce  which 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


345 


It  thus  exceeded  the  total  production  of  the 
great  industry.  As  to  the  relative  importance 
of  the  two  for  the  working  classes  suffice  it  to 
say  that  even  in  the  government  of  Moscow, 
which  is  the  chief  manufacturing  region  of 
Russia  (its  factories  yield  upwards  of  one-fifth 
in  value  of  the  aggregate  industrial  production 
of  European  Russia),  the  aggregate  incomes 
derived  by  the  population  from  the  domestic 
industries  are  three  times  larger  than  the 
aggregate  wages  earned  in  the  factories. 

The  most  striking  feature  of  the  Russian 
domestic  trades  is  that  the  sudden  start  which 
was  made  by  the  factories  in  Russia  did  not 
prejudice  the  domestic  industries.  On  the 
contrary,  it  gave  a  new  impulse  to  their  ex¬ 
tension  ;  they  grew  and  developed  precisely  in 
those  regions  where  the  factories  were  growing 
up  fastest. 

Another  most  suggestive  feature  is  the  fol¬ 
lowing  :  although  the  unfertile  provinces  of 
Central  Russia  have  been  from  time  immemorial 
the  seat  of  all  kinds  of  petty  trades,  several 
domestic  industries  of  modern  origin  are  de- 

they  use  to  manufacture  reaches  £21,087,000  (the  rouble  at  24cl.), 
that  is,  an  average  of  £25  per  worker.  An  average  of  £20  for 
the  7,500,000  persons  engaged  in  domestic  industries  would 
already  give  £150,000,000  for  their  aggregate  production  ;  but 
the  most  authoritative  investigators  consider  that  figure  as 
below  the  reality. 


346 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


veloping  in  those  provinces  which  are  best 
favoured  by  soil  and  climate.  Thus,  the  Stavro¬ 
pol  government  of  North  Caucasus,  where  the 
peasantry  have  plenty  of  fertile  soil,  has  sud¬ 
denly  become  the  seat  of  a  widely  developed 
silk-weaving  industry  in  the  peasants’  houses, 
and  now  it  supplies  Russia  with  cheap  silks 
which  have  completely  expelled  from  the 
market  the  plain  silks  formerly  imported  from 
France.  In  Orenburg  and  on  the  Black  Sea, 
the  petty  trades’  fabrication  of  agricultural 
machinery,  which  has  grown  up  lately,  is  an¬ 
other  instance  in  point. 

The  capacities  of  the  Russian  domestic  in¬ 
dustrial  workers  for  co-operative  organisation 
would  be  worthy  of  more  than  a  passing  mention. 
As  to  the  cheapness  of  the  produce  manu¬ 
factured  in  the  villages,  which  is  really  astonish¬ 
ing,  it  cannot  be  explained  in  full  by  the  ex¬ 
ceedingly  long  hours  of  labour  and  the  starva¬ 
tion  earnings,  because  overwork  and  very  low 
wages  are  characteristic  of  the  Russian  fac¬ 
tories  as  well.  It  depends  also  upon  the  cir¬ 
cumstance  that  the  peasant  who  grows  his  own 
food,  but  suffers  from  a  constant  want  of  money, 
sells  the  produce  of  his  industrial  labour  at  any 
price.  Therefore,  all  manufactured  goods  used 
by  the  Russian  peasantry,  save  the  printed 
cottons,  are  the  production  of  the  rural  manu- 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


347 


facturers.  But  many  articles  of  luxury,  too, 
are  made  in  the  villages,  especially  around 
Moscow,  by  peasants  who  continue  to  cultivate 
their  allotments.  The  silk  hats  which  are  sold 
in  the  best  Moscow  shops,  and  bear  the  stamp 
of  Nouveautes  Parisiennes,  are  made  by  the 
Moscow  peasants;  so  also  the  .  “  Vienna  ’ 5  fur¬ 
niture  of  the  best  “  Vienna  ”  shops,  even  if  it 
goes  to  supply  the  palaces.  And  what  is  most 
to  be  wondered  at  is  not  the  skill  of  the  peasants 
— agricultural  work  is  no  obstacle  to  acquiring 
industrial  skill — but  the  rapidity  with  which 
the  fabrication  of  fine  goods  has  spread  in  such 
villages  as  formerly  manufactured  only  goods 
of  the  roughest  description.* 

As  to  the  relations  between  agriculture  and 
industry,  one  cannot  peruse  the  documents 
accumulated  by  the  Russian  statisticians  with¬ 
out  coming  to  the  conclusion  that,  far  from 
damaging  agriculture,  the  domestic  trades,  on 
the  contrary,  are  the  best  means  for  improving 
it,  and  the  more  so,  as  for  several  months  every 
year  the  Russian  peasant  has  nothing  to  do 
in  the  fields.  There  are  regions  where  agri- 
culture  has  been  totally  abandoned  for  the 
industries  ;  but  these  are  regions  where  it 
was  rendered  impossible  by  the  very  small 

*  Some  of  the  produces  of  the  Russian  rural  industries  have 
lately  been  introduced  in  this  country,  and  find  a  good  sale. 


1 


348  SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


allotments  granted  to  the  liberated  serfs,  the 
bad  quality  or  the  want  of  meadows  in  the 
land  allotted  to  the  peasants,  and  by  the  general 
impoverishment  of  the  peasants,  following  a 
very  high  taxation  and  very  high  redemption 
taxes  for  the  land.  But  wherever  the  allotments 
are  reasonable  and  the  peasants  are  less  over¬ 
taxed,  they  continue  to  cultivate  the  land,  and 
their  fields  are  kept  in  better  order  ;  besides, 
the  average  numbers  of  live  stock  are  higher 
where  agriculture  is  carried  on  in  association 
with  the  domestic  trades.  Even  those  peasants 
whose  allotments  are  small,  find  the  means  of 
renting  more  land  if  they  earn  some  money 
from  their  industrial  work.  As  to  the  relative 
welfare,  I  need  hardly  add  that  it  always  stands 
on  the  side  of  those  villages  which  combine 


,  both  kinds  of  work.  Vorsma  and  Pavlovo — 
two  cutlery  villages,  one  of  which  is  purely 
industrial,  while  the  inhabitants  of  the  other 
continue  to  till  the  soil — could  be  quoted  as  a 
striking  instance  for  such  a  comparison.* 

Much  more  ought  to  be  said  with  regard  to 
the  rural  industries  of  Russia,  especially  to 
show  how  easily  the  peasants  associate  for  buy- 
I  ing  new  machinery,  or  for  avoiding  the  middle- 


*  Prugavin,  in  the  Vyestnilc  Promyshlennosti,  June,  1884. 
See  also  the  excellent  work  of  V.  V.  (Vorontsoff)  Destinies  of 
Capitalism  in  Russia,  1882  (Russia). 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


349 


man  in  their  purchases  of  raw  produce — as 
soon  as  misery  is  no  obstacle  to  the  association. 
Belgium,  and  especially  Switzerland,  could  also 
be  quoted  for  similar  illustrations,  but  the 
above  will  be  enough  to  give  a  general  idea  of 
the  importance,  the  vital  powers,  and  the  per¬ 
fectibility  of  the  rural  industries. 

Conclusions. 

The  facts  which  we  have  briefly  passed  in 
review  show,  to  some  extent,  the  benefits 
which  could  be  derived  from  a  combination  of 
agriculture  with  industry,  if  the  latter  could 
come  to  the  village,  not  in  its  present  shape  of 
a  capitalist  factory,  but  in  the  shape  of  a 
socially  organised  industrial  production,  with 
the  full  aid  of  machinery  and  technical  know¬ 
ledge.  In  fact,  the  most  prominent  feature  of 
the  petty  trades  is  that  a  relative  well-being 
is  found  only  where  they  are  combined  with 
agriculture  :  where  the  workers  have  remained 
in  possession  of  the  soil  and  continue  to  cul¬ 
tivate  it.  Even  amidst  the  weavers  of  France 
or  Moscow,  who  have  to  reckon  with  the  com¬ 
petition  of  the  factory,  relative  well-being  pre¬ 
vails  so  long  as  they  are  not  compelled  to  part 
with  the  soil.  On  the  contrary,  as  soon  as 
high  taxation  or  the .  impoverishment  during  a 


350 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


crisis  has  compelled  the  domestic  worker  to 
abandon  his  last  plot  of  land  to  the  usurer, 
misery  creeps  into  his  house.  The  sweater  be¬ 
comes  all-powerful,  frightful  overwork  is  resorted 
to,  and  the  whole  trade  often  falls  into  decay. 

Such  facts,  as  well  as  the  pronounced  ten¬ 
dency  of  the  factories  towards  migrating  to 
the  villages,  which  becomes  more  and  more 
apparent  nowadays,  and  found  of  late  its  ex¬ 
pression  in  the  ‘  Garden  Cities  5  movement,  are 
very  suggestive.  Of  course,  it  would  be  a 
great  mistake  to  imagine  that  industry  ought 
to  return  to  its  hand-work  stage  in  order  to  be 
combined  with  agriculture.  Whenever  a  saving 
'  of  human  labour  can  be  obtained  by  means  of 
a  machine,  the  machine  is  welcome  and  will  be 
resorted  to  ;  and  there  is  hardly  one  single 
branch  of  industry  into  which  machinery  work 
could  not  be  introduced  with  great  advantage, 
at  least  at  some  of  the  stages  of  the  manu¬ 
facture.  In  the  present  chaotic  state  of  in¬ 
dustry,  nails  and  cheap  pen-knives  can  be 
made  by  hand,  and  plain  cottons  be  woven  in 
the  hand-loom ;  but  such  an  anomaly  will 
not  last.  The  machine  will  supersede  hand¬ 
work  in  the  manufacture  of  plain  goods.  But 
at  the  same  time,  handwork  very  probably 
will  extend  its  domain  in  the  artistic  finishing 
of  many  things  which  are  now  made  entirely 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  351 

in  the  factory  ;  and  it  will  always  remain  an 
important  factor  in  the  growth  of  thousands  of 
young  and  new  trades. 

But  the  question  arises,  Why  should  not  the 
cottons,  the  woollen  cloth,  and  the  silks,  now 
woven  by  hand  in  the  villages,  he  woven  by 
machinery  in  the  same  villages,  without  ceas¬ 
ing  to  remain  connected  with  work  in  the 
fields  ?  Why  should  not  hundreds  of  domestic 
industries,  now  carried  on  entirely  by  hand, 
resort  to  labour-saving  machines,  as  they 
already  do  in  the  knitting  trade  and  many  ! 
others  ?  There  is  no  reason  why  the  small 
motor  should  not  be  of  a  much  more  general  j 
use  than  it  is  now,  wherever  there  is  no  needs 
to  have  a  factory ;  and  there  is  no  reason 
why  the  village  should  not  have  its  small 
factory,  wherever  factory  work  is  preferable, 
as  we  already  see  it  occasionally  in  certain 
villages  in  France. 

More  than  that.  There  is  no  reason  why  the 
factory,  with  its  motive  force  and  machinery, 
should  not  belong  to  the  community,  as  is 
already  the  case  for  motive  power  in  the  above- 
mentioned  workshops  and  small  factories  in 
the  French  portion  of  the  Jura  hills.  It  is 
evident  that  now,  under  the  capitalist  system, 
the  factory  is  the  curse  of  the  village,  as  it 
comes  to  overwork  children  and  to  make 


352 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


paupers  out  of  its  male  inhabitants  ;  and  it  is 
quite  natural  that  it  should  be  opposed  by  all 
means  by  the  workers,  if  they  have  succeeded 
in  maintaining  their  olden  trades’  organisations 
(as  at  Sheffield,  or  Solingen),  or  if  they  have 
not  yet  been  reduced  to  sheer  misery  (as  in  the 
Jura).  But  under  a  more  rational  social 
1  organisation  the  factory  would  find  no  such 
obstacles  :  it  would  be  a  boon  to  the  village. 
And  there  is  already  unmistakable  evidence  to 
show  that  a  move  in  this  direction  is  being 
made  in  a  few  village  communities. 

The  moral  and  physical  advantages  which 
/man  would  derive  from  dividing  his  work 
/  between  the  field  and  the  workshop  are  self- 
evident.  But  the  difficulty  is,  we  are  told,  in 
the  necessary  centralisation  of  the  modern 
industries.  In  industry,  as  well  as  in  politics, 
centralisation  has  so  many  admirers  !  But  in 
both  spheres  the  ideal  of  the  centralisers  badly 
needs  revision.  In  fact,  if  we  analyse  the 
modern  industries,  we  soon  discover  that  for 
some  of  them  the  co-operation  of  hundreds, 
or  even  thousands,  of  workers  gathered  at  the 
same  spot  is  really  necessary.  The  great  iron 
works  and  mining  enterprises  decidedly  belong 
to  that  category  ;  oceanic  steamers  cannot  be 
built  in  village  factories.  But  very  many  of 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


353 


our  big  factories  are  nothing  else  but  agglomera¬ 
tions  under  a  common  management,  of  several 
*  distinct  industries  ;  while  others  are  mere 
agglomerations  of  hundreds  of  copies  of  the 
very  same  machine ;  such  are  most  of  our 
gigantic  spinning  and  weaving  establishments. 

The  manufacture  being  a  strictly  private 
enterprise,  its  owners  find  it  advantageous  to 
have  all  the  branches  of  a  given  industry  under 
their  own  management ;  they  thus  cumulate 
the  profits  of  the  successive  transformations 
of  the  raw  material.  And  when  several  thou¬ 
sand  power-looms  are  combined  in  one  factory, 
the  owner  finds  his  advantage  in  being  able  to 
hold  the  command  of  the  market.  But  from 
a  technical  point  of  view  the  advantages  of  such 
an  accumulation  are  trifling  and  often  doubtful. 
Even  so  centralised  an  industry  as  that  of  the 
cottons  does  not  suffer  at  all  from  the  division 
of  production  of  one  given  sort  of  goods  at 
its  different  stages  between  several  separate 
factories  :  we  see  it  at  Manchester  and  its 
neighbouring  towns.  As  to  the  petty  trades,  no 
inconvenience  is  experienced  from  a  still  greater 
subdivision  between  the  workshops  in  the  watch 
trade  and  very  many  others. 

We  often  hear  that  one  horse-power  costs 
so  much  in  a  small  engine,  and  so  much  less 
in  an  engine  ten  times  more  powerful  ;  that 

12 


354 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


the  pound  of  cotton  yarn  costs  much  less  when 
the  factory  doubles  the  number  of  its  spindles. 
But,  in  the  opinion  of  the  best  engineering 
authorities,  such  as  Prof.  W.  Unwin,  the 
hydraulic,  and  especially  the  electric,  dis¬ 
tribution  of  power  from  a  central  station  sets 
aside  the  first  part  of  the  argument.*  As  to 
its  second  part,  calculations  of  this  sort  are 
only  good  for  those  industries  which  prepare 
the  half-manufactured  produce  for  further 
transformations.  As  to  those  countless  de¬ 
scriptions  of  goods  which  derive  their  value 
chiefly  from  the  intervention  of  skilled  labour, 
they  can  be  best  fabricated  in  smaller  factories 
which  employ  a  few  hundreds,  or  even  a  few 
scores  of  operatives.  This  is  why  the  “  con¬ 
centration  ”  so  much  spoken  of  is  often  nothing 
but  an  amalgamation  of  capitalists  for  the 
purpose  of  dominating  the  market ,  not  for 
cheapening  the  technical  process. 

Even  under  the  present  conditions  the 

*  I  may  add  from  my  own  experience  that  such  is  also  the 
opinion  of  several  Manchester  employers :  “  I  am  saving 

a  great  deal  by  using  municipal  electric  power  in  my  factory, 
instead  of  the  steam-engine.”  I  was  told  by  one  of  the  most 
respected  members  of  the  Manchester  community :  “  I  pay 
for  motive  power  according  to  the  number  of  persons  I  employ 
— two  hundred  at  certain  times,  and  fifty  in  other  parts  of  th® 
year.  I  need  not  buy  coal  and  stock  it  in  advance  for  all  th® 
year ;  I  have  saved  the  room  that  was  occupied  by  the  steam- 
engine  ;  and  the  room  above  it  is  not  heated  and  shaken  by  the 
engine  as  it  used  to  be.” 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  355 

leviathan  factories  offer  great  inconveniences, 
as  they  cannot  rapidly  reform  their  machinery 
according  to  the  constantly  varying  demands 
of  the  consumers.  How  many  failures  of  great 
concerns,  too  well  known  in  this  country  to  need 
to  be  named,  were  due  to  this  cause  during  the 
crisis  of  1886-1890.  As  for  the  new  branches 
of  industry  which  I  have  mentioned  at  the 
beginning  of  the  previous  chapter,  they  always 
must  make  a  start  on  a  small  scale  ;  and  they 
can  prosper  in  small  towns  as  well  as  in  big 
cities,  if  the  smaller  agglomerations  are  pro¬ 
vided  with  institutions  stimulating  artistic 
taste  and  the  genius  of  invention.  The  prog¬ 
ress  achieved  of  late  in  toy-making,  as  also  the 
high  perfection  attained  in  the  fabrication  of 
mathematical  and  optical  instruments,  of  furni¬ 
ture,  of  small  luxury  articles,  of  pottery  and  so 
on,  are  instances  in  point.  Art  and  science  are 
no  longer  the  monopoly  of  the  great  cities,  and 
further  progress  will  be  in  scattering  them 
over  the  country. 

The  geographical  distribution  of  industries  in 
a  given  country  depends,  of  course,  to  a  great 
extent  upon  a  complexus  of  natural  conditions  ; 
it  is  obvious  that  there  are  spots  which  are 
best  suited  for  the  development  of  certain 
industries.  The  banks  of  the  Clyde  and  the 
Tyne  are  certainly  most  appropriate  for  ship- 


356 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


building  yards,  and  shipbuilding  yards  must 
be  surrounded  by  a  variety  of  workshops  and 
factories.  The  industries  will  always  find  some 
advantages  in  being  grouped,  to  some  extent, 
according  to  the  natural  features  of  separate 
regions.  But  we  must  recognise  that  now 
they  are  not  at  all  grouped  according  to  those 
features.  Historical  causes — chiefly  religious 
wars  and  national  rivalries — have  had  a  good 
deal  to  do  with  their  growth  and  their  present 
distribution  ;  still  more  so  the  employers  were 
guided  by  considerations  as  to  the  facilities 
,  for  sale  and  export — that  is,  by  considerations 
which  are  already  losing  their  importance  with 
the  increased  facilities  for  transport,  and  will 
lose  it  still  more  when  the  producers  produce 
for  themselves,  and  not  for  customers  far 

awav. 

%/ 

Why,  in  a  rationally  organised  society,  ought 
London  to  remain  a  great  centre  for  the  jam 
and  preserving  trade,  and  manufacture  um¬ 
brellas  for  nearly  the  whole  of  the  United 
Kingdom  ?  Why  should  the  countless  White¬ 
chapel  petty  trades  remain  where  they  are, 
instead  of  being  spread  all  over  the  country  ? 
There  is  no  reason  whatever  why  the  mantles 
which  are  worn  by  English  ladies  should  be 
sewn  at  Berlin  and  in  Whitechapel,  instead  of 
in  Devonshire  or  Derbyshire.  Why  should 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


357 


Paris  refine  sugar  for  almost  the  whole  of 
France  ?  Why  should  one-half  of  the  boots 
and  shoes  used  in  the  United  States  be  manu¬ 
factured  in  the  1,500  workshops  of  Massachu¬ 
setts  ?  There  is  absolutely  no  reason  why 
these  and  like  anomalies  should  persist.  The 
industries  must  be  scattered  all  over  the  world ; 
and  the  scattering  of  industries  amidst  all  civil¬ 
ised  nations  will  be  necessarily  followed  by  a 
further  scattering  of  factories  over  the  territories 
of  each  nation. 

In  the  course  of  this  evolution,  the  natural 
produce  of  each  region  and  its  geographical 
conditions  certainly  will  be  one  of  the  factors 
which  will  determine  the  character  of  the  in¬ 
dustries  going  to  develop  in  this  region.  But 
when  we  see  that  Switzerland  has  become  a 
great  exporter  of  steam-engines,  railway  engines, 
and  steam-boats — although  she  h^s  no  iron  ore 
and  no  coal  for  obtaining  steel,  and  even  has 
no  seaport  to  import  them  ;  when  we  see  that 
Belgium  has  succeeded  in  being  a  great  ex¬ 
porter  of  grapes,  and  that  Manchester  has 
managed  to  become  a  seaport — we  understand 
that  in  the  geographical  distribution  of  in¬ 
dustries,  the  two  factors  of  local  produces  and 
of  an  advantageous  position  by  the  sea  are  not 
yet  the  dominant  factors.  We  begin  to  under¬ 
stand  that,  all  taken,  it  is  the  intellectual  factor 


358 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


— the  spirit  of  invention,  the  capacity  of  adapta¬ 
tion,  political  liberty,  and  so  on — which  counts 
for  more  than  all  others. 

That  all  the  industries  find  an  advantage  in 
being  carried  on  in  close  contact  with  a  great 
variety  of  other  industries  the  reader  has  seen 
already  from  numerous  examples.  Every  in¬ 
dustry  requires  technical  surroundings.  But  the 
same  is  also  true  of  agriculture. 

Agriculture  cannot  develop  without  the  aid  of 
'f,  machinery,  and  the  use  of  a  perfect  machinery 
cannot  be  generalised  without  industrial  sur¬ 
roundings  :  without  mechanical  workshops, 
easily  accessible  to  the  cultivator  of  the  soil, 
the  use  of  agricultural  machinery  is  not  possible. 
The  village  smith  would  not  do.  If  the  work 
of  a  thrashing-machine  has  to  be  stopped  for  a 
week  or  more,  because  one  of  the  cogs  in  a 
wheel  has  been  broken,  and  if  to  obtain  a  new 
wheel  one  must  send  a  special  messenger  to  the 
next  province — then  the  use  of  a  thrashing- 
machine  is  not  possible.  But  this  is  precisely 
what  I  saw  in  my  childhood  in  Central  Russia  ; 
and  quite  lately  I  have  found  the  very  same 
fact  mentioned  in  an  English  autobiography 
in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Besides,  in  all  the  northern  part  of  the  tem¬ 
perate  zone,  the  cultivators  of  the  soil  must 
have  some  sort  of  industrial  employment  dur- 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES.  359 

mg  the  long  winter  months.  This  is  what  has 
brought  about  the  great  development  of  rural 
industries,  of  which  we  have  just  seen  such 
interesting  examples.  But  this  need  is  also 
felt  in  the  soft  climate  of  the  Channel  Is¬ 
lands,  notwithstanding  the  extension  taken  by 
horticulture  under  glass.  “We  need  such 
industries.  Could  you  suggest  us  any  ?  ” 
wrote  to  me  one  of  my  correspondents  in 
Guernsey. 

But  this  is  not  j^et  all.  Agriculture  is  so 
much  in  need  of  aid  from  those  who  inhabit 
the  cities,  that  every  summer  thousands  of  men 
leave  their  slums  in  the  towns  and  go  to  the 
country  for  the  season  of  crops.  The  London 
destitutes  go  in  thousands  to  Kent  and  Sussex 
as  hay-makers  and  hop-pickers,  it  being  esti¬ 
mated  that  Kent  alone  requires  80,000  addi¬ 
tional  men  and  women  for  hop-picking  ;  whole 
villages  in  France  and  their  cottage  industries 
are  abandoned  in  the  summer,  and  the  peasants 
wander  to  the  more  fertile  parts  of  the  country  ; 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  human  beings  are 
transported  every  summer  to  the  prairies  of 
Manitoba  and  Dacota.  Every  summer  many 
thousands  of  Poles  spread  at  harvest  time  over 
the  plains  of  Mecklenburg,  Westphalia,  and 
even  France ;  and  in  Russia  there  is  every 
year  an  exodus  of  several  millions  of  men  who 


360 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AND 


journey  from  the  north  to  the  southern  prairies 
for  harvesting  the  crops  ;  while  many  St. 
Petersburg  manufacturers  reduce  their  pro¬ 
duction  in  the  summer,  because  the  operatives 
return  to  their  native  villages  for  the  culture 
of  their  allotments. 

Agriculture  cannot  be  carried  on  without 
additional  hands  in  the  summer  ;  but  it  still 
more  needs  temporary  aids  for  improving  the 
soil,  for  tenfolding  its  productive  powers. 
Steam-digging,  drainage,  and  manuring  would 
render  the  heavy  clays  in  the  north-west  of 
Lbndon  a  much  richer  soil  than  that  of  the 
American  prairies.  To  become  fertile,  those 
clays  want  only  plain,  unskilled  human  labour, 
such  as  is  necessary  for  digging  the  soil,  laying 
in  drainage  tubes,  pulverising  phosphorites,  and 
the  like  ;  and  that  labour  would  be  gladly 
done  by  the  factory  workers  if  it  were  properly 
organised  in  a  free  community  for  the  benefit 
of  the  whole  society.  The  soil  claims  that  sort 
of  aid,  and  it  would  have  it  under  a  proper 
organisation,  even  if  it  were  necessary  to  stop 
many  mills  in  the  summer  for  that  purpose. 
No  doubt  the  present  factory  owners  would 
consider  it  ruinous  if  they  had  to  stop  their 
mills  for  several  months  every  year,  because 
the  capital  engaged  in  a  factory  is  expected  to 
pump  money  every  day  and  every  hour,  if  pos- 


INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES. 


361 


sible.  But  that  is  the  capitalist’s  view  of  the 
matter,  not  the  community’s  view. 

As  to  the  workers,  who  ought  to  be  the  real 
managers  of  industries,  they  will  find  it  healthy 
not  to  perform  the  same  monotonous  work  all 
the  year  round,  and  they  will  abandon  it  for 
the  summer,  if  indeed  they  do  not  find  the 
means  of  keeping  the  factory  running  by 
relieving  each  other  in  groups. 

The  scattering  of  industries  over  the  country 
— so  as  to  bring  the  factory  amidst  the  fields, 
to  make  agriculture  derive  all  those  profits 
which  it  always  finds  in  being  combined  with 
industry  (see  the  Eastern  States  of  America) 
and  to  produce  a  combination  of  industrial  with 
agricultural  work — is  surely  the  next  step  to  be 
made,  as  soon  as  a  reorganisation  of  our  present 
conditions  is  possible.  It  is  being  made  already, 
here  and  there,  as  we  saw  on  the  preceding 
pages.  This  step  is  imposed  by  the  very  neces¬ 
sity  of  'producing  for  the  producers  themselves  ; 
it  is  imposed  by  the  necessity  for  each  healthy 
man  and  woman  to  spend  a  part  of  their  lives 
in  manual  work  in  the  free  air  ;  and  it  will 
be  rendered  the  more  necessary  when  the  great 
social  movements,  which  have  now  become 
unavoidable,  come  to  disturb  the  present  in¬ 
ternational  trade,  and  compel  each  nation  to 
revert  to  her  own  resources  for  her  own  main- 


362 


SMALL  INDUSTRIES. 


tenance.  Humanity  as  a  whole,  as  well  as  each 
separate  individual,  will  be  gainers  by  the 
change,  and  the  change  will  take  place. 

However,  such  a  change  also  implies  a 
thorough  modification  of  our  present  system  of 
education.  It  implies  a  society  composed  of 
men  and  women,  each  of  whom  is  able  to  work 
with  his  or  her  hands,  as  well  as  with  his  or 
her  brain,  and  to  do  so  in  more  directions 
than  one.  This  “  integration  of  capacities  ” 
and  “  integral  education  ”  I  am  now  going  to 
analyse. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


BRAIN  WORK  AND  MANUAL  WORK. 

Divorce  between  science  and  handicraft  —  Technical  educa¬ 
tion — Complete  education — The  Moscow  system  :  applied 
at  Chicago,  Boston,  Aberdeen — Concrete  teaching — Present 
waste  of  time — Science  and  technics — Advantages  which 
science  can  derive  from  a  combination  of  brain  work  with 
manual  work. 

IN  olden  times  men  of  science,  and  especially 
those  who  have  done  most  to  forward 
the  growth  of  natural  philosophy,  did  not 
despise  manual  work  and  handicraft.  Galileo 
made  his  telescopes  with  his  own  hands.  Newton 
learned  in  his  boyhood  the  art  of  managing 
tools  ;  he  exercised  his  young  mind  in  con¬ 
triving  most  ingenious  machines,  and  when  he 
began  his  researches  in  optics  he  was  able 
himself  to  grind  the  lenses  for  his  instruments, 
and  himself  to  make  the  well-known  telescope, 
which,  for  its  time,  was  a  fine  piece  of  work¬ 
manship.  Leibnitz  was  fond  of  inventing 
machines  :  windmills  and  carriages  to  be 
moved  without  horses  preoccupied  his  mind 


364 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


as  much  as  mathematical  and  philosophical 
speculations.  Linnseus  became  a  botanist  while 
helping  his  father — a  practical  gardener — in  his 
daily  work.  In  short,  with  our  great  geniuses 
handicraft  was  no  obstacle  to  abstract  researches 
— it  rather  favoured  them.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  the  workers  of  old  found  but  few 
opportunities  for  mastering  science,  many  of 
them  had,  at  least,  their  intelligences  stimu¬ 
lated  by  the  very  variety  of  work  which  was 
performed  in  the  then  unspecialised  work¬ 
shops  ;  and  some  of  them  had  the  benefit  of 
familiar  intercourse  with  men  of  science.  Watt 
and  Rennie  were  friends  with  Professor  Robin¬ 
son  ;  Brindley,  the  road-maker,  despite  his 
fourteenpence-a-day  wages,  enjoyed  intercourse 
with  educated  men,  and  thus  developed  his 
remarkable  engineering  faculties  ;  the  son  of  a 
well-to-do  family  could  “  idle  ”  at  a  wheel¬ 
wright’s  shop,  so  as  to  become  later  on  a 
Smeaton  or  a  Stephenson. 

We  have  changed  all  that.  Under  the  pre¬ 
text  of  division  of  labour,  we  have  sharply 
separated  the  brain  worker  from  the  manual 
worker.  The  masses  of  the  workmen  do  not 
receive  more  scientific  education  than  their 
grandfathers  did ;  but  they  have  been  de¬ 
prived  of  the  education  of  even  the  small 
workshop,  while  their  boys  and  girls  are  driven 


MANUAL  WORK. 


365 


into  a  mine  or  a  factory  from  the  age  of  thirteen, 
and  there  they  soon  forget  the  little  they  may 
have  learned  at  school.  As  to  the  men  of 
science,  they  despise  manual  labour.  How 
few  of  them  would  be  able  to  make  a  telescope, 
or  even  a  plainer  instrument  !  Most  of  them 
are  not  capable  of  even  designing  a  scientific 
instrument,  and  when  they  have  given  a  vague 
suggestion  to  the  instrument-maker,  they  leave 
it  with  him  to  invent  the  apparatus  they  need. 
Nay,  they  have  raised  the  contempt  of  manual 
labour  to  the  height  of  a  theory.  “  The  man 
of  science,”  they  say,  “  must  discover  the  laws 
of  nature,  the  civil  engineer  must  apply  them, 
and  the  worker  must  execute  in  steel  or  wood, 
in  iron  or  stone,  the  patterns  devised  by  the 
engineer.  He  must  work  with  machines  in¬ 
vented  for  him,  not  by  him.  No  matter  if  he 
does  not  understand  them  and  cannot  improve 
them  :  the  scientific  man  and  the  scientific 
engineer  will  take  care  of  the  progress  of  science 
and  industry.” 

It  may  be  objected  that  nevertheless  there  is 
a  class  of  men  who  belong  to  none  of  the  above 
three  divisions.  When  young  they  have  been 
manual  workers,  and  some  of  them  continue 
to  be  ;  but,  owing  to  some  happy  circumstances, 
they  have  succeeded  in  acquiring  some  scientific 
knowledge,  and  thus  they  have  combined  science 


366 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


with  handicraft.  Surely  there  are  such  men  ; 
happily  enough  there  is  a  nucleus  of  men  who 
have  escaped  the  so-much-advocated  specialisa¬ 
tion  of  labour,  and  it  is  precisely  to  them  that 
industry  owes  its  chief  recent  inventions.  But 
in  old  Europe,  at  least,  they  are  the  exceptions  ; 
they  are  the  irregulars — the  Cossacks  who  have 
broken  the  ranks  and  pierced  the  screens  so  care¬ 
fully  erected  between  the  classes.  And  they 
are  so  few,  in  comparison  with  the  ever-growing 
requirements  of  industry — and  of  science  as 
well,  as  I  am  about  to  prove — that  all  over  the 
world  we  hear  complaints  about  the  scarcity 
of  precisely  such  men. 

What  is  the  meaning,  in  fact,  of  the  outcry 
for  technical  education  which  has  been  raised 
at  one  and  the  same  time  in  England,  in  France, 
in  Germany,  in  the  States,  and  in  Russia,  if  it 
does  not  express  a  general  dissatisfaction  with 
the  present  division  into  scientists,  scientific 
engineers,  and  workers  ?  Listen  to  those  who 
know  industry,  and  you  will  see  that  the  sub¬ 
stance  of  their  complaints  is  this  :  “  The 

worker  whose  task  has  been  specialised  by  the 
permanent  division  of  labour  has  lost  the 
intellectual  interest  in  his  labour,  and  it  is 
especially  so  in  the  great  industries  :  he  has  lost 
his  inventive  powers.  Formerly,  he  invented 
very  much.  Manual  workers — not  men  of 


MANUAL  WORK. 


367 


science  nor  trained  engineers — have  invented, 
or  brought  to  perfection,  the  prime  motors  and 
all  that  mass  of  machinery  which  has  revolu¬ 
tionised  industry  for  the  last  hundred  years. 
But  since  the  great  factory  has  been  enthroned, 
the  worker,  depressed  by  the  monotony  of  his 
work,  invents  no  more.  What  can  a  weaver 
invent  who  merely  supervises  four  looms,  with¬ 
out  knowing  anything  either  about  their  com¬ 
plicated  movements  or  how  the  machines  grew 
to  be  what  they  are  ?  What  can  a  man 
invent  who  is  condemned  for  life  to  bind  to¬ 
gether  the  ends  of  two  threads  with  the  greatest 
celerity,  and  knows  nothing  beyond  making  a 
knot  ? 

44  At  the  outset  of  modern  industry,  three 
generations  of  workers  have  invented ;  now 
they  cease  to  do  so.  As  to  the  inventions  of 
the  engineers,  specially  trained  for  devising 
machines,  they  are  either  devoid  of  genius  or 
not  practical  enough.  Those  4  nearly  to  noth¬ 
ings,’  of  which  Sir  Frederick  Bramwell  spoke 
once  at  Bath,  are  missing  in  their  inventions — 
those  nothings  which  can  be  learned  in  the 
workshop  only,  and  which  permitted  a  Murdoch 
and  the  Soho  workers  to  make  a  practical 
engine  of  Watt’s  schemes.  None  but  he  who 
knows  the  machine — not  in  its  drawings  and 
models  only,  but  in  its  breathing  and  throbbings 


368 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


— who  unconsciously  thinks  of  it  while  stand¬ 
ing  by  it,  can  really  improve  it.  Smeaton  and 
Newaomen  surely  were  excellent  engineers  ;  but 
in  their  engines  a  boy  had  to  open  the  steam 
valve  at  each  stroke  of  the  piston  ;  and  it  was 
one  of  those  boys  who  once  managed  to  connect 
the  valve  with  the  remainder  of  the  machine, 
so  as  to  make  it  open  automatically,  while  he 
ran  away  to  play  with  other  boys.  But  in  the 
modern  machinery  there  is  no  room  left  for 
naive  improvements  of  that  kind.  Scientific 
education  on  a  wide  scale  has  become  necessary 
for  further  inventions,  and  that  education  is 
refused  to  the  workers.  So  that  there  is  no 
issue  out  of  the  difficulty,  unless  scientific  educa¬ 
tion  and  handicraft  are  combined  together — 
unless  integration  of  knowledge  takes  the  place 
of  the  present  divisions.” 

Such  is  the  real  substance  of  the  present 
movement  in  favour  of  technical  education. 
But,  instead  of  bringing  to  public  consciousness 
the,  perhaps,  unconscious  motives  of  the  present 
discontent,  instead  of  widening  the  views  of  the 
discontented  and  discussing  the  problem  to  its 
full  extent,  the  mouthpieces  of  the  movement 
do  not  mostly  rise  above  the  shopkeeper’s  view 
of  the  question.  Some  of  them  indulge  in  jingo 
talk  about  crushing  all  foreign  industries  out  of 
competition,  while  the  others  see  in  technical 


MANUAL  WORK.  369 

education  nothing  but  a  means  of  somewhat 
improving  the  flesh-machine  of  the  factory 
and  of  transferring  a  few  workers  into  the  upper 
class  of  trained  engineers. 

Such  an  ideal  may  satisfy  them,  but  it  cannot 
satisfy  those  who  keep  in  view  the  combined 
interests  of  science  and  industry,  and  consider 
both  as  a  means  for  raising  humanity  to  a  higher 
level.  We  maintain  that  in  the  interests  of 
both  science  and  industry,  as  well  as  of  society 
as  a  whole,  every  human  being,  without  dis¬ 
tinction  of  birth,  ought  to  receive  such  an 
education  as  would  enable  him,  or  her,  to 
combine  a  thorough  knowledge  of  science 
with  a  thorough  knowledge  of  handicraft. 
We  fully  recognise  the  necessity  of  specialisa¬ 
tion  of  knowledge,  but  we  maintain  that 
specialisation  must  follow  general  education, 
and  that  general  education  must  be  given  in 
science  and  handicraft  alike.  To  the  division  of 
society  into  brain  workers  and  manual  workers 
we  oppose  the  combination  of  both  kinds  of 
activities  ;  and  instead  of  “  technical  educa¬ 
tion,”  which  means  the  maintenance  of  the 
present  division  between  brain  work  and 
manual  work,  we  advocate  the  education 
integrate ,  or  complete  education,  which  means 
the  disappearance  of  that  pernicious  distinc¬ 
tion. 


370 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


Plainly  stated,  the  aims  of  the  school  under 
this  system  ought  to  be  the  following  :  To  give 
such  an  education  that,  on  leaving  school  at  the 
age  of  eighteen  or  twenty,  each  boy  and  each 
girl  should  be  endowed  with  a  thorough  know¬ 
ledge  of  science — such  a  knowledge  as  might 
enable  them  to  be  useful  workers  in  science — 
and,  at  the  same  time,  to  give  them  a  general 
knowledge  of  what  constitutes  the  bases  of 
technical  training,  and  such  a  skill  in  some 
special  trade  as  would  enable  each  of  them  to 
take  his  or  her  place  in  the  grand  world  of  the 
manual  production  of  wealth.*  I  know  that 
many  will  find  that  aim  too  large,  or  even  im¬ 
possible  to  attain,  but  I  hope  that  if  they  have 
the  patience  to  read  the  following  pages,  they  will 
see  that  we  require  nothing  beyond  what  can  be 
easily  attained.  In  fact,  it  has  been  attained  ; 
and  what  has  been  done  on  a  small  scale  could 
be  done  on  a  wider  scale,  were  it  not  for  the 
economical  and  social  causes  which  prevent 

*  In  their  examination  of  the  causes  of  unemployment  in 
York,  based  nob  on  economists’  hypotheses,  but  on  a  close  study 
of  the  real  facts  in  each  individual  case  ( U nemployment :  a 
Social  Study ,  London,  1911),  Seebohm  Rowntree  and  Mr. 
Bruno  Lasker  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  chief  cause  of 
unemployment  is  that  young  people,  after  having  left  the  school 
(where  they  learn  no  trade),  find  employment  in  such  professions 
as  greengrocer  boy,  newspaper  boy,  and  the  like,  which  represent 
“  a  blind  alley.”  When  they  reach  the  age  of  eighteen  or 
twenty,  they  must  leave,  because  the  wages  are  a  boy’s  wages, 
— and  they  know  no  trade  whatever  I 


MANUAL  WORK.  371 

any  serious  reform  from  being  accomplished  in 
our  miserably  organised  society. 

The  experiment  has  been  made  at  the  Moscow 
Technical  School  for  twenty  consecutive  years 
with  many  hundreds  of  boys  ;  and,  according 
to  the  testimonies  of  the  most  competent  judges 
at  the  exhibitions  of  Brussels,  Philadelphia, 
Vienna,  and  Paris,  the  experiment  has  been  a 
success.  The  Moscow  school  admitted  boys  not 
older  than  fifteen,*  and  it  required  from  boys  of 
that  age  nothing  but  a  substantial  knowledge  of 
geometry  and  algebra,  together  with  the  usual 
knowledge  of  their  mother  tongue  ;  younger 
pupils  were  received  in  the  preparatory  classes. 
The  school  was  divided  into  two  sections — the 
mechanical  and  the  chemical  ;  but  as  I  personally 
know  better  the  former,  and  as  it  is  also  the 
more  important  with  reference  to  the  question 
before  us,  so  I  shall  limit  my  remarks  to  the 
education  given  in  the  mechanical  section. 

After  a  five  or  six  years’  stay  at  the  school,  the 
students  left  it  with  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
higher  mathematics,  physics,  mechanics,  and  con¬ 
nected  sciences — so  thorough,  indeed,  that  it  was 
not  second  to  that  acquired  in  the  best  mathe- 

*  Unfortunately,  I  must  already  say  “  admitted  ”  instead  of 
“  admits.”  With  the  reaction  which  began  after  1881,  under  the 
reign  of  Alexander  III.,  this  school  was  “  reformed  ”  ;  that 
means  that  all  the  spirit  and  the  system  of  the  school  were 
destroyed. 


372 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


matical  faculties  of  the  most  eminent  European 
universities.  When  myself  a  student  of  the 
mathematical  faculty  of  the  St.  Petersburg 
University,  I  had  the  opportunity  of  comparing 
the  knowledge  of  the  students  at  the  Moscow 
Technical  School  with  our  own.  I  saw  the  courses 
of  higher  geometry  some  of  them  had  compiled 
for  the  use  of  their  comrades  ;  I  admired  the 
facility  with  which  they  applied  the  integral 
calculus  to  dynamical  problems,  and  I  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  while  we,  University  students, 
had  more  knowledge  of  a  general  character  (for 
instance,  in  mathematical  astronomy),  they,  the 
students  of  the  Technical  School,  were  much 
more  advanced  in  higher  geometry,  and  especially 
in  the  applications  of  higher  mathematics  to  the 
intricate  problems  of  dynamics,  the  theories  of 
heat  and  elasticity.  But  while  we,  the  students 
of  the  University,  hardly  knew  the  use  of  our 
hands,  the  students  of  the  Technical  School 
fabricated  with  their  own  hands ,  and  without  the 
help  of  professional  workmen,  fine  steam-engines, 
from  the  heavy  boiler  to  the  last  finely  turned 
screw,  agricultural  machinery,  and  scientific 
apparatus — all  for  the  trade — and  they  received 
the  highest  awards  for  the  work  of  their  hands  at 
the  international  exhibitions.  They  were  scienti¬ 
fically  educated  skilled  workers — workers  with 
university  education — highly  appreciated  even 


MANUAL  WORK.  373 

by  the  Russian  manufacturers  who  so  much 
distrust  science. 

Now,  the  methods  by  which  these  wonderful 
results  were  achieved  were  these  :  In  science, 
learning  from  memory  was  not  in  honour,  while 
independent  research  was  favoured  by  all  means. 
Science  was  taught  hand  in  hand  with  its  appli¬ 
cations,  and  what  was  learned  in  the  schoolroom 
was  applied  in  the  workshop.  Great  attention 
was  paid  to  the  highest  abstractions  of  geometry 
as  a  means  for  developing  imagination  and 
research. 

As  to  the  teaching  of  handicraft,  the  methods 
were  quite  different  from  those  which  proved  a 
failure  at  the  Cornell  University,  and  differed,  in 
fact,  from  those  used  in  most  technical  schools. 
The  student  was  not  sent  to  a  workshop  to  learn 
some  special  handicraft  and  to  earn  his  existence 
as  soon  as  possible  ;  but  the  teaching  of  technical 
skill  was  prosecuted  in  the  same  systematical 
way  as  laboratory  work  is  taught  in  the  univer¬ 
sities,  according  to  a  scheme  elaborated  by  the 
founder  of  the  school,  M.  Della vos,  and  now 
applied  at  Chicago  and  Boston.  It  is  evident 
that  drawing  was  considered  as  the  first  step  in 
technical  education.  Then  the  student  was 
brought,  first,  to  the  carpenter’s  workshop,  or 
rather  laboratory,  and  there  he  was  thoroughly 
taught  to  execute  all  kinds  of  carpentry  and 


374 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


joinery.  They  did  not  teach  the  pupil  to  make 
some  insignificant  work  of  house  decoration,  as 
they  do  in  the  system  of  the  slojd — the  Swedish 
method,  which  is  taught  especially  at  the  Naas 
school — but  they  taught  him,  to  begin  with,  to 
make  very  accurately  a  wooden  cube,  a  prism, 
a  cylinder  (with  the  planing  jack),  and  then — all 
fundamental  types  of  joining.  In  a  word,  he 
had  to  study,  so  to  say,  the  philosophy  of  joinery 
by  means  of  manual  work.  No  efforts  were 
spared  in  order  to  bring  the  pupil  to  a  certain 
perfection  in  that  branch — the  real  basis  of  all 
trades. 

Later  on,  the  pupil  was  transferred  to  the 
turner’s  workshop,  where  he  was  taught  to  make 
in  wood  the  patterns  of  those  things  which  he 
would  have  to  make  in  metal  in  the  following 
workshops.  The  foundry  followed,  and  there 
he  was  taught  to  cast  those  parts  of  machines 
which  he  had  prepared  in  wood  ;  and  it  was 
only  after  he  had  gone  through  the  first  three 
stages  that  he  was  admitted  to  the  smith’s  and 
engineering  workshops.  Such  was  the  system 
which  English  readers  will  find  described  in  full 
in  a  work  by  Mr.  Ch.  H.  Ham.*  As  for  the 

*  Manual  Training  :  the  Solution  of  Social  and  Industrial 
Problems.  By  Ch.  H.  Ham.  London  :  Blackie  &  Son,  1886. 
I  can  add  that  like  results  were  achieved  also  at  the  Krasnou- 
fimsk  Realschule,  in  the  province  of  Orenburg,  especially  with 
regard  to  agriculture  and  agricultural  machinery.  The  achieve- 


MANUAL  WORK. 


375 


perfection  of  the  mechanical  work  of  the  students, 
I  cannot  do  better  than  refer  to  the  reports  of 
the  juries  at  the  above-named  exhibitions. 

In  America  the  same  system  has  been  intro¬ 
duced,  in  its  technical  part,  first,  in  the  Chicago 
Manual  Training  School,  and  later  on  in  the 
Boston  Technical  School — the  best,  I  am  told, 
of  the  sort — and  finally  at  Tuskagee,  in  the  ex¬ 
cellent  school  for  coloured  young  men.  In  this 
country,  or  rather  in  Scotland,  I  found  the 
system  applied  with  full  success,  for  some  years, 
under  the  direction  of  Dr.  Ogilvie  at  Gordon’s 
College  in  Aberdeen.  It  is  the  Moscow  or  Chi¬ 
cago  system  on  a  limited  scale.  While  receiving 
substantial  scientific  education,  the  pupils  are 
also  trained  in  the  workshops — but  not  for  one 
special  trade,  as  it  unhappily  too  often  is  the 
case.  They  pass  through  the  carpenter’s  work¬ 
shop,  the  casting  in  metals,  and  the  engineering 
workshop  ;  and  in  each  of  these  they  learn  the 
foundations  of  each  of  the  three  trades  sufficiently 
well  for  supplying  the  school  itself  with  a  number 
of  useful  things.  Besides,  as  far  as  I  could 
ascertain  from  what  I  saw  in  the  geographical 
and  physical  classes,  as  also  in  the  chemical 
laboratory,  the  system  of  “  through  the  hand  to 
the  brain,”  and  vice  versa ,  is  in  full  swing,  and  it 

ments  of  the  school,  however,  are  so  interesting  that  they 
deserve  more  than  a  short  mention. 


376 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


is  attended  with  the  best  success.  The  boys 
work  with  the  physical  instruments,  and  they 
study  geography  in  the  field,  instruments  in 
hands,  as  well  as  in  the  class-room.  Some  of 
their  surveys  filled  my  heart,  as  an  old  geog¬ 
rapher,’  with  joy.* 

The  Moscow  Technical  School  surely  was  not 
an  ideal  school.')*  It  totally  neglected  the  humani¬ 
tarian  education  of  the  young  men.  But  we 
must  recognise  that  the  Moscow  experiment — 
not  to  speak  of  hundreds  of  other  partial  experi¬ 
ments — has  perfectly  well  proved  the  possibility 
of  combining  a  scientific  education  of  a  very 
high  standard  with  the  education  which  is 
necessary  for  becoming  an  excellent  skilled 
workman.  It  has  proved,  moreover,  that  the 
best  means  for  producing  really  good  skilled 
labourers  is  to  seize  the  bull  by  the  horns,  and  to 
grasp  the  educational  problem  in  its  great  fea¬ 
tures,  instead  of  trying  to  give  some  special  skill 
in  some  handicraft,  together  with  a  few  scraps  of 
knowledge  in  a  certain  branch  of  some  science. 

*  It  is  evident  that  the  Gordon’s  College  industrial  department 
is  not  a  mere  copy  of  any  foreign  school ;  on  the  contrary,  I 
cannot  help  thinking  that  if  Aberdeen  has  made  that  excellent 
move  towards  combining  science  with  handicraft,  the  move 
was  a  natural  outcome  of  what  has  been  practised  long  since,  on 
a  smaller  scale,  in  the  Aberdeen  daily  schools. 

f  What  this  school  is  now,  I  don’t  know.  In  the  first  years  of 
Alexander  IIL’s  reign  it  was  wrecked,  like  so  many  other  good 
institutions  of  the  early  part  of  the  reign  of  Alexander  II. 
But  the  system  was  not  lost.  It  was  carried  over  to  America. 


MANUAL  WORK, 


377 


And  it  has  shown  also  what  can  be  obtained, 
without  over-pressure,  if  a  rational  economy 
of  the  scholar’s  time  is  always  kept  in  view, 
and  theory  goes  hand  in  hand  with  practice. 
Viewed  in  this  light,  the  Moscow  results  do  not 
seem  extraordinary  at  all,  and  still  better  results 
may  be  expected  if  the  same  principles  are  applied 
from  the  earliest  years  of  education. 

Waste  of  time  is  the  leading  feature  of  our 
present  education.  Not  only  are  we  taught  a 
mass  of  rubbish,  but  what  is  not  rubbish  is  taught 
so  as  to  make  us  waste  over  it  as  much  time 
as  possible.  Our  present  methods  of  teaching 
originate  from  a  time  when  the  accomplishments 
required  from  an  educated  person  were  extremely 
limited  ;  and  they  have  been  maintained,  not¬ 
withstanding  the  immense  increase  of  know¬ 
ledge  which  must  be  conveyed  to  the  scholar’s 
mind  since  science  has  so  much  widened  its  for¬ 
mer  limits.  Hence  the  over-pressure  in  schools, 
and  hence,  also,  the  urgent  necessity  of  totally 
revising  both  the  subjects  and  the  methods  of 
teaching,  according  to  the  new  wants  and  to  the 
examples  already  given  here  and  there,  by  sepa¬ 
rate  schools  and  separate  teachers. 

It  is  evident  that  the  years  of  childhood  ought 
not  to  be  spent  so  uselessly  as  they  are  now. 
German  teachers  have  shown  how  the  very  plays 
of  children  can  be  made  instrumental  in  convey- 


378 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


ing  to  the  childish  mind  some  concrete  knowledge 
in  both  geometry  and  mathematics.  The  chil¬ 
dren  who  have  made  the  squares  of  the  theorem 
of  Pythagoras  out  of  pieces  of  coloured  card¬ 
board,  will  not  look  at  the  theorem,  when  it 
comes  in  geometry,  as  on  a  mere  instrument 
of  torture  devised  by  the  teachers  ;  and  the  less 
so  if  they  apply  it  as  the  carpenters  do.  Com¬ 
plicated  problems  of  arithmetic,  which  so  much 
harassed  us  in  our  boyhood,  are  easily  solved  by 
children  seven  and  eight  years  old  if  they  are 
put  in  the  shape  of  interesting  puzzles.  And  if 
the  Kindergarten — German  teachers  often  make 
of  it  a  kind  of  barrack  in  which  each  movement 
of  the  child  is  regulated  beforehand — has  often 
become  a  small  prison  for  the  little  ones,  the  idea 
which  presided  at  its  foundation  is  nevertheless 
true.  In  fact,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  imagine, 
without  having  tried  it,  how  many  sound  notions 
of  nature,  habits  of  classification,  and  taste  for 
natural  sciences  can  be  conveyed  to  the  children’s 
minds  ;  and,  if  a  series  of  concentric  courses 
adapted  to  the  various  phases  of  development  of 
the  human  being  were  generally  accepted  in 
education,  the  first  series  in  all  sciences,  save 
sociology,  could  be  taught  before  the  age  of  ten 
or  twelve,  so  as  to  give  a  general  idea  of  the 
universe,  the  earth  and  its  inhabitants,  the  chief 
physical,  chemical,  zoological,  and  botanical 


MANUAL  WORK. 


379 


phenomena,  leaving  the  discovery  of  the  laws  of 
those  phenomena  to  the  next  series  of  deeper 
and  more  specialised  studies. 

On  the  other  side,  we  all  know  how  children 
like  to  make  toys  themselves,  how  they  gladly 
imitate  the  work  of  full-grown  people  if  they  see 
them  at  work  in  the  workshop  or  the  building- 
yard.  But  the  parents  either  stupidly  paralyse 
that  passion,  or  do  not  know  how  to  utilise  it. 
Most  of  them  despise  manual  work  and  prefer 
sending  tlleir  children  to  the  study  of  Roman 
history,  or  of  Franklin’s  teachings  about  sav¬ 
ing  money,  to  seeing  them  at  a  work  which  is 
good  for  the  “lower  classes  only.”  They  thus 
do  their  best  to  render  subsequent  learning 
the  more  difficult. 

And  then  come  the  school  years,  and  time  is 
wasted  again  to  an  incredible  extent.  Take, 
for  instance,  mathematics,  which  every  one 
ought  to  know,  because  it  is  the  basis  of  all  sub¬ 
sequent  education,  and  which  so  few  really  learn 
in  our  schools.  In  geometry,  time  is  foolishly 
wasted  by  using  a  method  which  merely  con¬ 
sists  in  committing  geometry  to  memory.  In 
most  cases,  the  boy  reads  again  and  again  the 
proof  of  a  theorem  till  his  memory  has  retained 
the  succession  of  reasonings.  Therefore,  nine 
boys  out  of  ten,  if  asked  to  prove  an  elementary 
theorem  two  years  after  having  left  the  school, 


380 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


will  be  unable  to  do  it,  unless  mathematics  is 
their  speciality.  They  will  forget  which  auxiliary 
lines  to  draw,  and  they  never  have  been  taught 
to  discover  the  proofs  by  themselves.  No  wonder 
that  later  on  they  find  such  difficulties  in  apply¬ 
ing  geometry  to  physics,  that  their  progress  is 
despairingly  sluggish,  and  that  so  few  master 
higher  mathematics. 

There  is,  however,  the  other  method  which  per¬ 
mits  the  pupil  to  progress,  as  a  whole,  at  a  much 
speedier  rate,  and  under  which  he  who  once  has 
learned  geometry  will  know  it  all  his  life  long. 
Under  this  system,  each  theorem  is  put  as  a 
problem  ;  its  solution  is  never  given  beforehand, 
and  the  pupil  is  induced  to  find  it  by  himself. 
Thus,  if  some  preliminary  exercises  with  the 
rule  and  the  compass  have  been  made,  there  is 
not  one  boy  or  girl,  out  of  twenty  or  more,  who 
will  not  be  able  to  find  the  means  of  drawing 
an  angle  which  is  equal  to  a  given  angle,  and  to 
prove  their  equality,  after  a  few  suggestions  from 
the  teacher  ;  and  if  the  subsequent  problems 
are  given  in  a  systematic  succession  (there  are 
excellent  text-books  for  the  purpose),  and  the 
teacher  does  not  press  his  pupils  to  go  faster 
than  they  can  go  at  the  beginning,  they  ad¬ 
vance  from  one  problem  to  the  next  with  an 
astonishing  facility,  the  only  difficulty  being 
to  bring  the  pupil  to  solve  the  first  problem, 


MANUAL  WORK.  381 

and  thus  to  acquire  confidence  in  his  own 
reasoning. 

Moreover,  each  abstract  geometrical  truth 
must  be  impressed  on  the  mind  in  its  concrete 
form  as  well.  As  soon  as  the  pupils  have  solved 
a  few  problems  on  paper,  they  must  solve  them 
in  the  playing-ground  with  a  few  sticks  and  a 
string,  and  they  must  apply  their  knowledge  in 
the  workshop.  Only  then  will  the  geometrical 
lines  acquire  a  concrete  meaning  in  the  children’s 
minds  ;  only  then  will  they  see  that  the  teacher 
is  playing  no  tricks  when  he  asks  them  to  solve 
problems  with  the  rule  and  the  compass  without 
resorting  to  the  protractor  ;  only  then  will  they 
know  geometry. 

“  Through  the  eyes  and  the  hand  to  the  brain  ” 
— this  is  the  true  principle  of  economy  of  time  in 
teaching.  I  remember,  as  if  it  were  yesterday, 
how  geometry  suddenly  acquired  for  me  a  new 
meaning,  and  how  this  new  meaning  facilitated 
all  ulterior  studies.  It  was  as  we  were  mastering 
at  school  a  Montgolfier  balloon,  and  I  remarked 
that  the  angles  at  the  summits  of  each  of  the 
twenty  strips  of  paper  out  of  which  we  were 
going  to  make  the  balloon  must  cover  less  than 
the  fifth  part  of  a  right  angle  each.  I  remember, 
next,  how  the  sinuses  and  the  tangents  ceased 
to  be  mere  cabalistic  signs  when  they  permitted 
us  to  calculate  the  length  of  a  stick  in  a  working 


382  BRAIN  WORK  AND 


profile  of  a  fortification  ;  and  how  geometry  in 
space  became  plain  when  we  began  to  make  on  a 
small  scale  a  bastion  with  embrasures  and  bar¬ 
bettes — an  occupation  which  obviously  was  soon 
prohibited  on  account  of  the  state  into  which  we 
brought  our  clothes.  “You  look  like  navvies,” 
was  the  reproach  addressed  to  us  by  our  intelli¬ 
gent  educators,  while  we  were  proud  precisely  of 
being  navvies,  and  of  discovering  the  use  of 
geometry. 

By  compelling  our  children  to  study  real 
things  from  mere  graphical  representations,  in¬ 
stead  of  making  those  things  themselves,  we 
compel  them  to  waste  the  most  precious  time  ; 
we  uselessly  worry  their  minds  ;  we  accustom 
them  to  the  worst  methods  of  learning  ;  we  kill 
independent  thought  in  the  bud ;  and  very 
seldom  we  succeed  in  conveying  a  real  knowledge 
of  what  we  are  teaching.  Superficiality,  parrot¬ 
like  repetition,  slavishness  and  inertia  of  mind 
are  the  results  of  our  method  of  education.  We 
do  not  teach  our  children  how  to  learn. 

The  very  beginnings  of  science  are  taught  on 
the  same  pernicious  system.  In  most  schools 
even  arithmetic  is  taught  in  the  abstract  way, 
and  mere  rules  are  stuffed  into  the  poor  little 
heads.  The  idea  of  a  unit,  which  is  arbitrary 
and  can  be  changed  at  will  in  our  measurement 
(the  match,  the  box  of  matches,  the  dozen  of 


MANUAL  WORK. 


383 


boxes,  or  the  gross  ;  the  metre,  the  centimetre, 
the  kilometre,  and  so  on),  is  not  impressed  on  the 
mind,  and  therefore  when  the  children  come  to 
the  decimal  fractions  they  are  at  a  loss  to  under¬ 
stand  them.  In  this  country,  the  United  States 
and  Russia,  instead  of  accepting  the  decimal 
system,  which  is  the  system  of  our  numeration, 
they  still  torture  the  children  by  making  them 
learn  a  system  of  weights  and  measures  which 
ought  to  have  been  abandoned  long  since.  The 
pupils  lose  at  that  full  two  years,  and  when  they 
come  later  on  to  problems  in  mechanics  and 
physics,  schoolboys  and  schoolgirls  spend  most 
of  their  time  in  endless  calculations  which  only 
fatigue  them  and  inspire  in  them  a  dislike  of 
exact  science.  But  even  there,  where  the  decimal 
measures  have  been  introduced,  much  time  is  lost 
in  school  simply  because  the  teachers  are  not 
accustomed  to  the  idea  that  every  measure  is 
only  approximate,  and  that  it  is  absurd  to  cal¬ 
culate  with  the  exactitude  of  one  gramme,  or 
of  one  metre,  when  the  measuring  itself  does  not 
give  the  elements  of  such  an  exactitude.  Where¬ 
as  in  France,  where  the  decimal  system  of  meas¬ 
ures  and  money  is  a  matter  of  daily  life,  even 
those  workers  who  have  received  the  plainest 
elementary  education  are  quite  familiar  with 
decimals.  To  represent  twenty-five  centimes, 
or  twenty-five  centimetres,  they  write  “  zero 


384 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


twenty-five,”  while  most  of  my  readers  surely 
remember  how  this  same  zero  at  the  head  of  a 
row  of  figures  puzzled  them  in  their  boyhood. 
We  do  all  that  is  possible  to  render  algebra  un¬ 
intelligible,  and  our  children  spend  one  year 
before  they  have  learned  what  is  not  algebra 
at  all,  but  a  mere  system  of  abbreviations, 
which  can  be  learned  by  the  way,  if  it  is  taught 
together  with  arithmetic.* 

The  waste  of  time  in  physics  is  simply  re¬ 
volting.  While  young  people  very  easily  under¬ 
stand  the  principles  of  chemistry  and  its  formulae, 
as  soon  as  they  themselves  make  the  first  ex- 

*  To  those  readers  who  are  really  interested  in  the  education 
of  children,  M.  Leray,  the  French  translator  of  this  book,  recom¬ 
mended  a  series  of  excellent  little  works  “conceived,”  he  wrote, 
“  in  the  very  spirit  of  the  ideas  developed  in  this  chapter. 
Their  leading  principle  is  that  ‘  in  order  to  be  soundly  educative, 
all  teaching  must  be  objective,  especially  at  the  outset,’  and 
that  ‘  systematical  abstraction,  if  it  be  introduced  into  the 
teaching  without  an  obj  ecti  ve  (concrete)  preparation,  is  noxious.  ’  ” 
M.  Leray  meant  the  series  of  initiations  published  by  the 
French  publishers,  Hachette  :  Initiation  mathematique ,  by  C.  A. 
Laisant,  a  book  completed  by  the  Initiateur  mathematique, 
which  is  a  game  with  small  cubes,  very  ingenious  and  giving  in 
a  concrete  form  the  proofs  of  arithmetics,  the  metric  system, 
algebra  and  geometry  ;  Initiation  astronomique,  by  C.  Flam- 
marion  ;  Initiation  chimique ,  by  Georges  Darzens  ;  Initiation 
a  la  m6canique ,  by  Ch.  Ed.  Guillaume ;  and  Initiation  zoologique, 
by  E.  Brucker.  The  authors  of  these  works  had — it  would  not 
be  just  not  to  mention  it — predecessors  in  Jean  Mace’s  UArith- 
metique  du  grand-jpa/pa,  and  Rene  Leblanc,  “  whose  excellent 
manual,  Les  Sciences  physiques  a  VEcole  primaire  ” — M.  Leray 
says  that  from  his  own  experience  upon  pupils  from  eleven  to 
thirteen  years  old — “  gives  even  to  the  dullest  children  the 
taste  or  even  the  passion  for  physical  experiment.” 


MANUAL  WORK. 


385 


periments  with  a  few  glasses  and  tubes,  they 
mostly  find  the  greatest  difficulties  in  grasping 
the  mechanical  introduction  into  physics,  partly 
because  they  do  not  know  geometry,  and  espe¬ 
cially  because  they  are  merely  shown  costty 
machines  instead  of  being  induced  to  make 
themselves  plain  apparatus  for  illustrating  the 
phenomena  they  study. 

Instead  of  learning  the  laws  of  force  with 
plain  instruments  which  a  boy  of  fifteen  can 
easily  make,  they  learn  them  from  mere  draw¬ 
ings,  in  a  purely  abstract  fashion.  Instead  of 
making  themselves  an  Atwood’s  machine  with  a 
broomstick  and  the  wheel  of  an  old  clock,  or 
verifying  the  laws  of  falling  bodies  with  a  key 
gliding  on  an  inclined  string,  they  are  shown 
a  complicated  apparatus,  and  in  most  cases  the 
teacher  himself  does  not  know  how  to  explain 
to  them  the  principle  of  the  apparatus,  and 
indulges  in  irrelevant  details.  And  so  it  goes 
on  from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  with  but  a 
few  honourable  exceptions.* 

*  Take,  for  instance,  the  description  of  Atwood’s  machine 
in  any  course  of  elementary  physics.  You  will  find  very  great 
attention  paid  to  the  wheels  on  which  the  axle  of  the  pulley  is 
made  to  lie  ;  hollow  boxes,  plates  and  rings,  the  clock,  and 
other  accessories  will  be  mentioned  before  one  word  is  said  upon 
the  leading  idea  of  the  machine,  which  is  to  slacken  the  motion 
of  a  falling  body  by  making  a  falling  body  of  small  weight  move 
a  heavier  body  which  is  in  the  state  of  inertia,  gravity  acting 
on  it  in  two  opposite  directions.  That  was  the  inventor’s  idea  ; 

13 


386  BRAIN  WORK  AND 

If  waste  of  time  is  characteristic  of  our  methods 
of  teaching  science,  it  is  characteristic  as  well 
of  the  methods  used  for  teaching  handicraft. 
We  know  how  years  are  wasted  when  a  boy 
serves  his  apprenticeship  in  a  workshop  ;  but 
the  same  reproach  can  be  addressed,  to  a  great 
extent,  to  those  technical  schools  which  endea¬ 
vour  at  once  to  teach  some  special  handicraft, 
instead  of  resorting  to  the  broader  and  surer 
methods  of  systematical  teaching.  Just  as 
there  are  in  science  some  notions  and  methods 
which  are  preparatory  to  the  study  of  all  sciences, 
so  there  are  also  some  fundamental  notions  and 
methods  preparatory  to  the  special  study  of  any 
handicraft. 

Reuleaux  has  shown  in  that  delightful  book, 

and  if  it  is  made  clear,  the  pupils  see  at  once  that  to  suspend 
two  bodies  of  equal  weight  over  a  pulley,  and  to  make  them 
move  by  adding  a  small  weight  to  one  of  them,  is  one  of  the 
means  (and  a  good  one]  for  slackening  the  motion  during  the 
falling  ;  they  see  that  the  friction  of  the  pulley  must  be  reduced 
to  a  minimum,  either  by  using  the  two  pairs  of  wheels,  which  so 
much  puzzle  the  text- book  makers,  or  by  any  other  means  ; 
that  the  clock  is  a  luxury,  and  the  “  plates  and  rings  ”  are  mere 
accessories  :  in  short,  that  Atwood’s  idea  can  be  realised  with  the 
wheel  of  a  clock  fastened,  as  a  pulley,  to  a  wall,  or  on  the  top 
of  a  broomstick  secured  in  a  vertical  position.  In  this  case  the 
pupils  will  understand  the  idea  of  the  machine  and  of  its  inventor, 
and  they  will  accustom  themselves  to  separate  the  leading  idea 
from  the  accessories  ;  while  in  the  other  case  they  merely 
look  with  curiosity  at  the  tricks  performed  by  the  teacher 
with  a  complicated  machine,  and  the  few  who  finally  under¬ 
stand  it  spend  a  quantity  of  time  in  the  effort.  In  reality,  all 
apparatus  used  to  illustrate  the  fundamental  laws  of  physics 
ought  to  he  made  by  the  children  themselves. 


MANUAL  WORK. 


387 


the  Theoretische  Kinematik ,  that  there  is,  so  to 
say,  a  philosophy  of  all  possible  machinery. 
Each  machine,  however  complicated,  can  be 
reduced  to  a  few  elements — plates,  cylinders, 
discs,  cones,  and  so  on — as  well  as  to  a  few 
tools — chisels,  saws,  rollers,  hammers,  etc.  ; 
and,  however  complicated  its  movements,  they 
can  be  decomposed  into  a  few  modifications  of 
motion,  such  as  the  transformation  of  circular 
motion  into  a  rectilinear,  and  the  like,  with  a 
number  of  intermediate  links.  So  also  each 
handicraft  can  be  decomposed  into  a  number 
of  elements.  In  each  trade  one  must  know  how 
to  make  a  plate  with  parallel  surfaces,  a  cylinder, 
a  disc,  a  square,  and  a  round  hole  ;  how  to 
manage  a  limited  number  of  tools,  all  tools 
being  mere  modifications  of  less  than  a  dozen 
types  ;  and  how  to  transform  one  kind  of  mo¬ 
tion  into  another.  This  is  the  foundation  of  all 
mechanical  handicrafts  ;  so  that  the  knowledge 
of  how  to  make  in  wood  those  primary  elements, 
how  to  manage  the  chief  tools  in  wood-work, 
and  how  to  transform  various  kinds  of  motion 
ought  to  be  considered  as  the  very  basis  for  the 
subsequent  teaching  of  all  possible  kinds  of 
mechanical  handicraft.  The  pupil  who  has 
acquired  that  skill  already  knows  one  good 
half  of  all  possible  trades. 

Besides,  none  can  be  a  good  worker  in  science 


388 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


unless  he  is  in  possession  of  good  methods  of 
scientific  research  ;  unless  he  has  learned  to 
observe,  to  describe  with  exactitude,  to  dis¬ 
cover  mutual  relations  between  facts  seemingly 
disconnected,  to  make  inductive  hypotheses 
and  to  verify  them,  to  reason  upon  cause  and 
effect,  and  so  on.  And  none  can  be  a  good 
manual  worker  unless  he  has  been  accustomed 
to  the  good  methods  of  handicraft  altogether. 
He  must  grow  accustomed  to  conceive  the 
subject  of  his  thoughts  in  a  concrete  form,  to 
draw  it,  or  to  model,  to  hate  badly  kept  tools 
and  bad  methods  of  work,  to  give  to  everything 
a  fine  touch  of  finish,  to  derive  artistic  enjoy¬ 
ment  from  the  contemplation  of  gracious  forms 
and  combinations  of  colours,  and  dissatisfaction 
from  what  is  ugly.  Be  it  handicraft,  science,  or 
art,  the  chief  aim  of  the  school  is  not  to  make  a 
specialist  from  a  beginner,  but  to  teach  him  the 
elements  of  knowledge  and  the  good  methods 
of  work,  and,  above  all,  to  give  him  that  general 
inspiration  which  will  induce  him,  later  on,  to 
put  in  whatever  he  does  a  sincere  longing  for 
truth,  to  like  what  is  beautiful,  both  as  to  form 
and  contents,  to  feel  the  necessity  of  being  a 
useful  unit  amidst  other  human  units,  and  thus 
to  feel  his  heart  at  unison  with  the  rest  of 
humanity. 

As  for  avoiding  the  monotony  of  work  which 


MANUAL  WORK. 


389 


would  result  from  the  pupil  always  making 
mere  cylinders  and  discs,  and  never  making 
full  machines  or  other  useful  things,  there  are 
thousands  of  means  for  avoiding  that  want  of 
interest,  and  one  of  them,  in  use  at  Moscow, 
is  worthy  of  notice.  It  was,  not  to  give  work  for 
mere  exercise,  but  to  utilise  everything  which 
the  pupil  makes,  from  his  very  first  steps. 
Do  you  remember  how  you  were  delighted,  in 
your  childhood,  if  your  work  was  utilised,  be 
it  only  as  a  part  of  something  useful  ?  So  they 
did  at  Moscow.  Each  plank  planed  by  the 
pupils  was  utilised  as  a  part  of  some  machine 
in  some  of  the  other  workshops.  When  a, 
pupil  came  to  the  engineering  workshop,  and 
was  set  to  maSe  a  quadrangular  block  of  iron 
with  parallel  and  perpendicular  surfaces,  the 
block  had  an  interest  in  his  eyes,  because,  when 
he  had  finished  it,  verified  its  angles  and  sur¬ 
faces,  and  corrected  its  defects,  the  block  was 
not  thrown  under  the  bench — it  was  given  to  a 
more  advanced  pupil,  who  made  a  handle  to 
it,  painted  the  whole,  and  sent  it  to  the  shop  of 
the  school  as  a  paper-weight.  The  systematical 
teaching  thus  received  the  necessary  attractive¬ 
ness.* 

*  The  sale  of  the  pupils’  work  was  not  insignificant,  especially 
when  they  reached  the  higher  classes,  and  made  steam-engines. 
Therefore  the  Moscow  school,  when  I  knew  it,  was  one  of  the 
cheapest  in  the  world.  It  gave  boarding  and  education  at  a 


390 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


It  is  evident  that  celerity  of  work  is  a  most 
important  factor  in  production.  So  it  might 
be  asked  if,  under  the  above  system,  the  neces¬ 
sary  speed  of  work  could  be  obtained.  But  there 
are  two  kinds  of  celerity.  There  is  the  celerity 
which  I  saw  in  a  Nottingham  lace-factory  : 
full-grown  men,  with  shivering  hands  and 
heads,  were  feverishly  binding  together  the  ends 
of  two  threads  from  the  remnants  of  cotton- 
yarn  in  the  bobbins  ;  you  hardly  could  follow 
their  movements.  But  the  very  fact  of  re¬ 
quiring  such  kind  of  rapid  work  is  the  con¬ 
demnation  of  the  factory  system.  What  has 
remained  of  the  human  being  in  those  shiver¬ 
ing  bodies  ?  What  will  be  their  outcome  ? 
Why  this  waste  of  human  force,  when  it  could 
produce  ten  times  the  value  of  the  odd  rests  of 
yarn  ?  This  kind  of  celerity  is  required  ex¬ 
clusively  because  of  the  cheapness  of  the 
factory  slaves  ;  so  let  us  hope  that  no  school 
will  ever  aim  at  this  kind  of  quickness  in  work. 

But  there  is  also  the  time-saving  celerity 
of  the  well-trained  worker,  and  this  is  surely 
achieved  best  by  the  kind  of  education  which 
we  advocate.  However  plain  his  work,  the 
educated  worker  makes  it  better  and  quicker 

very  low  fee.  But  imagine  such  a  school  connected  with  a 
farm  school,  which  grows  food  and  exchanges  it  at  its  cost 
price.  What  will  be  the  cost  of  education  then  ? 


MANUAL  WORK. 


391 


than  the  uneducated.  Observe,  for  instance, 
how  a  good  worker  proceeds  in  cutting  anything 
— say  a  piece  of  cardboard — and  compare  his 
movements  with  those  of  an  improperly  trained 
worker.  The  latter  seizes  the  cardboard,  takes 
the  tool  as  it  is,  traces  a  line  in  a  haphazard  way, 
and  begins  to  cut  ;  half-way  he  is  tired,  and 
when  he  has  finished  his  work  is  worth  nothing  ; 
whereas,  the  former  will  examine  his  tool  and 
improve  it  if  necessary ;  he  will  trace  the 
line  with  exactitude,  secure  both  cardboard  and 
rule,  keep  the  tool  in  the  right  way,  cut  quite 
easily,  and  give  you  a  piece  of  good  work. 

This  is  the  true  time-saving  celerity,  the  most 
appropriate  for  economising  human  labour ; 
and  the  best  means  for  attaining  it  is  an  edu¬ 
cation  of  the  most  superior  kind.  The  great 
masters  painted  with  an  astonishing  rapidity ; 
but  their  rapid  work  was  the  result  of  a  great 
development  of  intelligence  and  imagination, 
of  a  keen  sense  of  beauty,  of  a  fine  perception  of 
colours.  And  that  is  the  kind  of  rapid  work 
of  which  humanity  is  in  need. 

Much  more  ought  to  be  said  as  regards  the 
duties  of  the  school,  but  I  hasten  to  say  a  few 
words  more  as  to  the  desirability  of  the  kind  of 
education  briefly  sketched  in  the  preceding 
pages.  Certainly,  I  do  not  cherish  the  illusion 


392 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


that  a  thorough  reform  in  education,  or  in  any 
of  the  issues  indicated  in  the  preceding  chapters, 
will  be  made  as  long  as  the  civilised  nations 
remain  under  the  present  narrowly  egotistic 
system  of  production  and  consumption.  All 
we  can  expect,  as  long  as  the  present  condi¬ 
tions  last,  is  to  have  some  microscopical  at¬ 
tempts  at  reforming  here  and  there  on  a  small 
scale — attempts  which  necessarily  will  prove 
to  be  far  below  the  expected  results,  because 
of  the  impossibility  of  reforming  on  a  small 
scale  when  so  intimate  a  connection  exists 
between  the  manifold  functions  of  a  civilised 
nation.  But  the  energy  •  of  the  constructive 
genius  of  society  depends  chiefly  upon  the 
depths  of  its  conception  as  to  what  ought  to 
be  done,  and  how  ;  and  the  necessity  of  re¬ 
casting  education  is  one  of  those  necessities 
which  are  most  comprehensible  to  all,  and  are 
most  appropriate  for  inspiring  society  with  those 
ideals,  without  which  stagnation  or  even  decay 
are  unavoidable. 

So  let  us  suppose  that  a  community — a  city, 
or  a  territory  which  has,  at  least,  a  few  millions 
of  inhabitants — gives  the  above-sketched  educa¬ 
tion  to  all  its  children,  without  distinction  of 
birth  (and  we  are  rich  enough  to  permit  us  the 
luxury  of  such  an  education),  without  asking 
anything  in  return  from  the  children  but  what 


MANUAL  WORK. 


393 


they  will  give  when  they  have  become  pro¬ 
ducers  of  wealth.  Suppose  such  an  education  is 
given,  and  analyse  its  probable  consequences. 

I  will  not  insist  upon  the  increase  of  wealth 
which  would  result  from  having  a  young  army 
of  educated  and  well-trained  producers  ;  nor 
shall  I  insist  upon  the  social  benefits  which 
would  be  derived  from  erasing  the  present 
distinction  between  the  brain  workers  and  the 
manual  workers,  and  from  thus  reaching  the 
concordance  of  interest  and  harmony  so  much 
wanted  in  our  times  of  social  struggles.  I 
shall  not  dwell  upon  the  fulness  of  life  which 
would  result  for  each  separate  individual,  if  he 
were  enabled  to  enjoy  the  use  of  both  his  mental 
and  bodily  powers  ;  nor  upon  the  advantages 
of  raising  manual  labour  to  the  place  of  honour 
it  ought  to  occupy  in  society,  instead  of  being 
a  stamp  of  inferiority,  as  it  is  now.  Nor  shall 
I  insist  upon  the  disappearance  of  the  present 
misery  and  degradation,  with  all  their  conse¬ 
quences — vice,  crime,  prisons,  price  of  blood, 
denunciation,  and  the  like — which  necessarily 
would  follow.  In  short,  I  will  not  touch  nOw 
the  great  social  question,  upon  which  so  much 
has  been  written  and  so  much  remains  to  be 
written  yet.  I  merely  intend  to  point  out  in 
these  pages  the  benefits  which  science  itself 
would  derive  from  the  change. 


394 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


Some  will  say,  of  course,  that  to  reduce  men 
of  science  to  the  role  of  manual  workers  would 
mean  the  decay  of  science  and  genius.  But  those 
who  will  take  into  account  the  following  consider¬ 
ations  probably  will  agree  that  the  result  ought 
to  be  the  reverse — namely,  such  a  revival  of 
science  and  art,  and  such  a  progress  in  industry, 
as  we  only  can  faintly  foresee  from  what  we 
know  about  the  times  of  the  Renaissance.  It 
has  become  a  commonplace  to  speak  with 
emphasis  about  the  progress  of  science  during 
the  nineteenth  century ;  and  it  is  evident 
that  our  century,  if  compared  with  centuries 
past,  has  much  to  be  proud  of.  But,  if  we  take 
into  account  that  most  of  the  problems  which 
our  century  has  solved  already  had  been  in¬ 
dicated,  and  their  solutions  foreseen,  a  hundred 
years  ago,  we  must  admit  that  the  progress 
was  not  so  rapid  as  might  have  been  expected, 
and  that  something  hampered  it. 

The  mechanical  theory  of  heat  was  very 
well  foreseen  in  the  last  century  by  Rumford 
and  Humphry  Davy,  and  even  in  Russia  it 
was  advocated  by  Lomonosoff.*  However,  much 
more  than  half  a  century  elapsed  before  the 
theory  reappeared  in  science.  Lamarck,  and 
even  Linnaous,  Geoff roy  Saint-Hilaire,  Erasmus 

*  In  an  otherwise  also  remarkable  memoir  on  the  Arctic 
Regions. 


MANUAL  WORK. 


395 


Darwin,  and  several  others  were  fully  aware  of 
the  variability  of  species  ;  they  were  opening 
the  way  for  the  construction  of  biology  on  the 
principles  of  variation  ;  but  here,  again,  half  a 
century  was  wasted  before  the  variability  of 
species  was  brought  again  to  the  front ;  and  we 
all  remember  how  Darwin’s  ideas  were  carried 
on  and  forced  on  the  attention  of  university 
people,  chiefly  by  persons  who  were  not  pro¬ 
fessional  scientists  themselves ;  and  yet  in 
Darwin’s  hands  the  theory  of  evolution  surely 
was  narrowed,  owing  to  the  overv/helming 
importance  given  to  only  one  factor  of  evolution. 

For  many  years  past  astronomy  has  been 
needing  a  careful  revision  of  the  Kant  and 
Laplace’s  hypothesis  ;  but  no  theory  is  yet 
forthcoming  which  would  compel  general  ac¬ 
ceptance.  Geology  surely  has  made  wonderful 
progress  in  the  reconstitution  of  the  palaeon¬ 
tological  record,  but  dynamical  geology  pro¬ 
gresses  at  a  despairingly  slow  rate  ;  while  all 
future  progress  in  the  great  question  as  to 
the  laws  of  distribution  of  living  organisms 
on  the  surface  of  the  earth  is  hampered  by 
the  want  of  knowledge  as  to  the  extension  of 
glaciation  during  the  Quaternary  epoch.* 

*  The  rate  of  progress  in  the  recently  so  popular  Glacial 
Period  question  was  strikingly  slow.  Already  Venetz  in  1821 
and  Esmarck  in  1823  had  explained  the  erratic  phenomena  by 


396 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


In  short,  in  each  branch  of  science  a  revision 
of  the  current  theories  as  well  as  new  wide 
generalisations  are  wanted.  And  if  the  revi¬ 
sion  requires  some  of  that  inspiration  of  genius 
which  moved  Galileo  and  Newton,  and  which 
depends  in  its  appearance  upon  general  causes 
of  human  development,  it  requires  also  an 
increase  in  the  number  of  scientific  workers. 
When  facts  contradictory  to  current  theories 
become  numerous,  the  theories  must  be  revised 
(we  saw  it  in  Darwin’s  case),  and  thousands 
of  simple  intelligent  workers  in  science  are 
required  to  accumulate  the  necessary  facts. 

Immense  regions  of  the  earth  still  remain 
unexplored  ;  the  study  of  the  geographical  dis- 

the  glaciation  of  Europe.  Agassiz  came  forth  with  the  glacia¬ 
tion  of  the  Alps,  the  Jura  mountains,  and  Scotland,  about  1840  ; 
and  five  years  later,  Guyot  had  published  his  maps  of  the  routes 
followed  by  Alpine  boulders.  But  forty-two  years  elapsed  after 
Venetz  wrote  before  one  geologist  of  mark  (Lyell)  dared  timidly 
to  accept  his  theory,  even  to  a  limited  extent — the  most  interest¬ 
ing  fact  being  that  Guyot’ s  maps,  considered  as  irrelevant  in  1845, 
were  recognised  as  conclusive  after  1863.  Even  now — more 
than  half  a  century  after  Agassiz’s  first  work — Agassiz’s  views 
are  not  yet  either  refuted  or  generally  accepted.  So  also  Forbes’s 
views  upon  the  plasticity  of  ice.  Let  me  add,  by  the  way, 
that  the  whole  polemics  as  to  the  viscosity  of  ice  is  a  striking 
instance  of  how  facts,  scientific  terms,  and  experimental  methods 
quite  familiar  to  building  engineers,  were  ignored  by  those 
who  took  part  in  the  polemics.  If  these  facts,  terms  and 
methods  were  taken  into  account,  the  polemics  would  not  have 
raged  for  years  with  no  result.  Like  instances,  to  show  how 
science  suffers  from  a  want  of  acquaintance  with  facts  and 
methods  of  experimenting  both  well  known  to  engineers,  florists, 
cattle-breeders,  and  so  on,  could  be  produced  in  numbers. 


MANUAL  WORK. 


397 


tribution  of  animals  and  plants  meets  with 
stumbling-blocks  at  every  step.  Travellers 
cross  continents,  and  do  not  know  even  how 
to  determine  the  latitude  nor  how  to  manage 
a  barometer.  Physiology,  both  of  plants  and 
animals,  psycho-physiology,  and  the  psychologi¬ 
cal  faculties  of  man  and  animals  are  so  many 
branches  of  knowledge  requiring  more  data 
of  the  simplest  description.  History  remains 
a  fable  convenue  chiefly  because  it  wants  fresh 
ideas,  but  also  because  it  wants  scientifically 
thinking  workers  to  reconstitute  the  life  of 
past  centuries  in  the  same  way  as  Thorold 
Rogers  or  Augustin  Thierry  have  done  it  for 
separate  epochs. 

In  short,  there  is  not  one  single  science  which 
does  not  suffer  in  its  development  from  a  want 
of  men  and  women  endowed  with  a  philoso¬ 
phical  conception  of  the  universe,  ready  to  apply 
their  forces  of  investigation  in  a  given  field, 
however  limited,  and  having  leisure  for  devoting 
themselves  to  scientific  pursuits.  In  a  com¬ 
munity  such  as  we  suppose,  thousands  of 
workers  would  be  ready  to  answer  any  appeal 
for  exploration.  Darwin  spent  almost  thirty 
years  in  gathering  and  analysing  facts  for  the 
elaboration  of  the  theory  of  the  origin  of  species. 
Had  he  lived  in  such  a  society  as  we  suppose, 
he  simply  would  .have  made  an  appeal  to 


398 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


volunteers  for  facts  and  partial  exploration,  and 
thousands  of  explorers  would  have  answered  his 
appeal.  Scores  of  societies  would  have  come 
to  life  to  debate  and  to  solve  each  of  the  partial 
problems  involved  in  the  theory,  and  in  ten 
years  the  theory  would  have  been  verified ; 
all  those  factors  of  evolution  which  only  now 
begin  to  receive  due  attention  would  have 
appeared  in  their  full  light.  The  rate  of  scien¬ 
tific  progress  would  have  been  tenfold  ;  and  if 
the  individual  would  not  have  the  same  claims 
on  posterity’s  gratitude  as  he  has  now,  the 
unknown  mass  would  have  done  the  work  with 
more  speed  and  with  more  prospect  for  ulterior 
advance  than  the  individual  could  do  in  his 
lifetime.  Mr.  Murray’s  dictionary  is  an  illustra¬ 
tion  of  that  kind  of  work — the  work  of  the  future. 

However,  there  is  another  feature  of  modern 
science  which  speaks  more  strongly  yet  in 
favour  of  the  change  we  advocate.  While 
industry,  especially  by  the  end  of  the  last 
century  and  during  the  first  part  of  the  present, 
has  been  inventing  on  such  a  scale  as  to  re¬ 
volutionise  the  very  face  of  the  earth,  science  has 
been  losing  its  inventive  powers.  Men  of  science 
invent  no  more,  or  very  little.  Is  it  not  strik¬ 
ing,  indeed,  that  the  steam-engine,  even  in  its 
leading  principles,  the  railway -engine,  the  steam¬ 
boat,  the  telephone,  the  phonograph,  the  weav- 


MANUAL  WORK. 


399 


ing-machine,  the  lace-machine,  the  lighthouse, 
the  macadamised  road,  photography  in  black 
and  in  colours,  and  thousands  of  less  important 
things,  have  not  been  invented  by  professional 
men  of  science,  although  none  of  them  would 
have  refused  to  associate  his  name  with  any  of 
the  above-named  inventions  ?  Men  who  hardly 
had  received  any  education  at  school,  who  had 
merely  picked  up  the  crumbs  of  knowledge  from 
the  tables  of  the  rich,  and  who  made  their 
experiments  with  the  most  primitive  means — 
the  attorney’s  clerk  Smeaton,  the  instrument- 
maker  Watt,  the  brakesman  Stephenson,  the 
jeweller’s  apprentice  Fulton,  the  millwright 
Rennie,  the  mason  Telford,  and  hundreds  of 
others  whose  very  names  remain  unknown, 
were,  as  Mr.  Smiles  justly  says,  “  the  real  makers 
of  modern  civilisation  ”  ;  while  the  professional 
men  of  science,  provided  with  all  means  for 
acquiring  knowledge  and  experimenting,  have 
invented  little  in  the  formidable  array  of 
implements,  machines,  and  prime-motors  which 
has  shown  to  humanity  how  to  utilise  and  to 
manage  the  forces  of  nature.*  The  fact  is 

*  Chemistry  is,  to  a  great  extent,  an  exception  to  the  rule. 
Is  it  not  because  the  chemist  is  to  such  an  extent  a  manual 
worker  ?  Besides,  during  the  last  ten  years  we  see  a  decided 
revival  in  scientific  inventiveness,  especially  in  physics — that  is, 
in  a  branch  in  which  the  engineer  and  the  man  of  science  meet 
so  much  together. 


400 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


striking,  but  its  explanation  is  very  simple : 
those  men — the  Watts  and  the  Stephensons — 
knew  something  which  the  savants  do  not  know 
— they  knew  the  use  of  their  hands  ;  their 
surroundings  stimulated  their  inventive  powers ; 
they  knew  machines,  their  leading  principles, 
and  their  work  ;  they  had  breathed  the  at¬ 
mosphere  of  the  workshop  and  the  building- 
yard. 

We  know  how  men  of  science  will  meet  the 
reproach.  They  will  say  :  “  We  discover  the 
laws  of  nature,  let  others  apply  them  ;  it  is  a 
simple  division  of  labour.”  But  such  a  re¬ 
joinder  would  be  utterly  untrue.  The  march 
of  progress  is  quite  the  reverse,  because  in  a 
hundred  cases  against  one  the  mechanical 
invention  comes  before  the  discovery  of  the 
scientific  law.  It  was  not  the  dynamical 
theory  of  heat  which  came  before  the  steam- 
engine — it  followed  it. 

When  thousands  of  engines  already  were 
transforming  heat  into  motion  under  the  eyes 
of  hundreds  of  professors,  and  when  they  had 
done  so  for  half  a  century,  or  more  ;  when 
thousands  of  trains,  stopped  by  powerful  brakes, 
were  disengaging  heat  and  spreading  sheaves 
of  sparks  on  the  rails  at  their  approach  to  the 
stations  ;  when  all  over  the  civilised  world 
heavy  hammers  and  perforators  were  rendering 


MANUAL  WORK.  401 

burning  hot  the  masses  of  iron  they  were 
hammering  and  perforating — then,  and  then 
only,  Seguin,  senior,  in  France,  and  a  doctor, 
Mayer,  in  Germany,  ventured  to  bring  out  the 
mechanical  theory  of  heat  with  all  its  con¬ 
sequences  :  and  yet  the  men  of  science  ignored 
the  work  of  Seguin  and  almost  drove  Mayer 
to  madness  by  obstinately  clinging  to  their 
mysterious  caloric  fluid.  Worse  than  that, 
they  described  Joule’s  first  determination  of 
the  mechanical  equivalent  of  heat  as  “  un¬ 
scientific.” 

When  thousands  of  engines  had  been  illus¬ 
trating  for  some  time  the  impossibility  of 
utilising  all  the  heat  disengaged  by  a  given 
amount  of  burnt  fuel,  then  came  the  second 
law  of  Clausius.  When  all  over  the  world 
industry  already  was  transforming  motion  into 
heat,  sound,  light,  and  electricity,  and  each  one 
into  each  other,  then  only  came  Grove’s  theory 
of  the  4  4  correlation  of  physical  forces  ”  ;  and 
Grove’s  work  had  the  same  fate  before  the 
Royal  Society  as  Joule’s.  The  publication  of 
his  memoir  was  refused  till  the  year  1856. 

It  was  not  the  theory  of  electricity  which 
gave  us  the  telegraph.  When  the  telegraph 
was  invented,  all  we  knew  about  electricity  was 
but  a  few  facts  more  or  less  badly  arranged  in 
our  books ;  the  theory  of  electricity  is  not 


402 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


ready  yet ;  it  still  waits  for  its  Newton,  not¬ 
withstanding  the  brilliant  attempts  of  late 
years.  Even  the  empirical  knowledge  of  the 
laws  of  electrical  currents  was  in  its  infancy 
when  a  few  bold  men  laid  a  cable  at  the  bottom 
of  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  despite  the  warnings  of 
the  authorised  men  of  science. 

The  name  of  “  applied  science  ”  is  quite 
misleading,  because,  in  the  great  majority  of 
cases,  invention,  far  from  being  an  applica¬ 
tion  of  science,  on  the  contrary  creates  a  new 
branch  of  science.  The  American  bridges 
were  no  application  of  the  theory  of  elasticity  ; 
they  came  before  the  theory,  and  all  we  can 
say  in  favour  of  science  is,  that  in  this  special 
branch,  theory  and  practice  developed  in  a 
parallel  way,  helping  one  another.  It  was  not 
the  theory  of  the  explosives  which  led  to  the 
discovery  of  gunpowder ;  gunpowder  was  in 
use  for  centuries  before  the  action  of  the  gases 
in  a  gun  was  submitted  to  scientific  analysis. 
And  so  on.  One  could  easily  multiply  the 
illustrations  by  quoting  the  great  processes  of 
metallurgy  ;  the  alloys  and  the  properties  they 
acquire  from  the  addition  of  very  small  amounts 
of  some  metals  or  metalloids ;  the  recent 
revival  of  electric  lighting ;  nay,  even  the 
weather  forecasts  which  truly  deserved  the 
reproach  of  being  “  unscientific  ”  when  they 


MANUAL  WORK. 


403 


were  started  for  the  first  time  by  that  excellent 
observer  of  shooting  stars,  Mathieu  de  la  Drome, 
and  by  an  old  Jack  tar,  Fitzroy — all  these  could 
be  mentioned  as  instances  in  point. 

Of  course,  we  have  a  number  of  cases  in  which 
the  discovery,  or  the  invention,  was  a  mere 
application  of  a  scientific  law  (cases  like  the 
discovery  of  the  planet  Neptune),  but  in  the 
immense  majority  of  cases  the  discovery,  or  the 
invention,  is  unscientific  to  begin  with.  It 
belongs  much  more  to  the  domain  of  art — art 
taking  the  precedence  over  science,  as  Helm¬ 
holtz  has  so  well  shown  in  one  of  his  popular 
lectures — and  only  after  the  invention  has  been 
made,  science  comes  to  interpret  it.  It  is 
obvious  that  each  invention  avails  itself  of  the 
previously  accumulated  knowledge  and  modes 
of  thought ;  but  in  most  cases  it  makes  a 
start  in  advance  upon  what  is  known  ;  it  makes 
a  leap  in  the  unknown,  and  thus  opens  a  quite 
new  series  of  facts  for  investigation.  This 
character  of  invention,  which  is  to  make  a 
start  in  advance  of  former  knowledge,  instead 
of  merely  applying  a  law,  makes  it  identical,  as 
to  the  processes  of  mind,  with  discovery  ;  and, 
therefore,  people  who  are  slow  in  invention  are 
also  slow  in  discovery. 

In  most  cases,  the  inventor,  however  inspired 
by  the  general  state  of  science  at  a  given 


404 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


moment,  starts  with  a  very  few  settled  facts 
at  his  disposal.  The  scientific  facts  taken  into 
account  for  inventing  the  steam-engine,  or  the 
telegraph,  or  the  phonograph  were  strikingly 
elementary.  So  that  we  can  affirm  that  what 
we  presently  know  is  already  sufficient  for 
resolving  any  of  the  great  problems  which 
stand  in  the  order  of  the  day — prime-motors 
without  the  use  of  steam,  the  storage  of  energy, 
the  transmission  of  force,  or  the  flying-machine. 
If  these  problems  are  not  yet  solved,  it  is 
merely  because  of  the  want  of  inventive  genius, 
the  scarcity  of  educated  men  endowed  with  it, 
and  the  present  divorce  between  science  and 
industry.*  On  the  one  side,  we  have  men  who 
are  endowed  with  capacities  for  invention,  but 
have  neither  the  necessary  scientific  knowledge 
nor  the  means  for  experimenting  during  long 
years  ;  and,  on  the  other  side,  we  have  men 
endowed  with  knowledge  and  facilities  for  ex¬ 
perimenting,  but  devoid  of  inventive  genius, 
owing  to  their  education,  too  abstract,  too 
scholastic,  too  bookish,  and  to  the  surroundings 
they  live  in  —  not  to  speak  of  the  patent 
system,  which  divides  and  scatters  the  efforts  of 
the  inventors  instead  of  combining  them.f 

*  I  leave  on  purpose  these  lines  as  they  were  in  the  first 
edition.  All  these  desiderata  are  already  accomplished  facts. 

f  The  same  remark  ought  to  be  made  as  regards  the  soci¬ 
ologists,  and  still  more  so  the  economists.  What  are  most  of 


MANUAL  WORK.  405 

The  flight  of  genius  which  has  characterised 
the  workers  at  the  outset  of  modern  industry 
has  been  missing  in  our  professional  men  of 
science.  And  they  will  not  recover  it  as  long  as 
they  remain  strangers  to  the  world,  amidst  their 
dusty  bookshelves  ;  as  long  as  they  are  not 
workers  themselves,  amidst  other  workers,  at 
the  blaze  of  the  iron  furnace,  at  the  machine 
in  the  factory,  at  the  turning-lathe  in  the  en¬ 
gineering  workshop  ;  sailors  amidst  sailors  on 
the  sea,  and  fishers  in  the  fishing-boat,  wood¬ 
cutters  in  the  forest,  tillers  of  the  soil  in  the 
field. 

Our  teachers  in  art — Ruskin  and  his  school — 
have  repeatedly  told  us  of  late  that  we  must  not 
expect  a  revival  of  art  as  long  as  handicraft 
remains  what  it  is  ;  they  have  shown  how  Greek 
and  mediaeval  art  were  daughters  of  handicraft, 
how  one  was  feeding  the  other.  The  same  is 
true  with  regard  to  handicraft  and  science  ; 
their  separation  is  the  decay  of  both.  As  to  the 
grand  inspirations  which  unhappily  have  been  so 
much  neglected  in  most  of  the  recent  discussions 
about  art — and  which  are  missing  in  science  as 

them,  including  the  socialists,  doing,  but  studying  chiefly  the 
books  previously  written  and  the  systems,  instead  of  studying 
the  facts  of  the  economical  life  of  the  nations,  and  the  thousands 
of  attempts  at  giving  to  agriculture  and  industry  new  forms  of 
organisation  and  new  methods,  which  are  now  made  every¬ 
where  in  Europe  and  America  ? 


406 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


well — these  can  be  expected  only  when  humanity, 
breaking  its  present  bonds,  shall  make  a  new  start 
in  the  higher  principles  of  solidarity,  doing  away 
with  the  present  duality  of  moral  sense  and 
philosophy. 

It  is  evident,  however,  that  all  men  and  women 
cannot  equally  enjoy  the  pursuit  of  scientific 
work.  The  variety  of  inclinations  is  such  that 
some  will  find  more  pleasure  in  science,  some 
others  in  art,  and  others  again  in  some  of  the 
numberless  branches  of  the  production  of  wealth. 
But,  whatever  the  occupations  preferred,  by 
everyone,  everyone  will  be  the  more  useful  in 
his  own  branch  if  he  is  in  possession  of  a  serious 
scientific  knowledge.  And,  whosoever  he  might 
be — scientist  or  artist,  physicist  or  surgeon, 
chemist  or  sociologist,  historian  or  poet — he 
would  be  the  gainer  if  he  spent  a  part  of 
his  life  in  the  workshop  or  the  farm  (the  work¬ 
shop  and  the  farm),  if  he  were  in  contact  with 
humanity  in  its  daily  work,  and  had  the 
satisfaction  of  knowing  that  he  himself  dis¬ 
charges  his  duties  as  an  unprivileged  producer 
of  wealth. 

How  much  better  the  historian  and  the  soci¬ 
ologist  would  understand  humanity  if  they 
knew  it,  not  in  books  only,  not  in  a  few  of  its 
representatives,  but  as  a  whole,  in  its  daily  life, 
daily  work,  and  daily  affairs  !  How  much  more 


MANUAL  WORK. 


407 


medicine  would  trust  to  hygiene,  and  how  much 
less  to  prescriptions,  if  the  young  doctors  were 
the  nurses  of  the  sick  and  the  nurses  received 
the  education  of  the  doctors  of  our  time !  And 
how  much  the  poet  would  gain  in  his  feeling  of 
the  beauties  of  nature,  how  much  better  would  he* 
know  the  human  heart,  if  he  met  the  rising  sun 
amidst  the  tillers  of  the  soil,  himself  a  tiller  ; 
if  he  fought  against  the  storm  with  the  sailors 
on  board  ship  ;  if  he  knew  the  poetry  of  labour 
and  rest,  sorrow  and  joy,  struggle  and  conquest ! 
Greift  nur  hinein  in’s  voile  Menschenleben ! 
Goethe  said ;  Ein  jeder  lebt’s — nicht  vielen  ist’s 
beJcannt.  But  how  few  poets  follow  his  ad¬ 
vice  ! 

The  so-called  “  division  of  labour  ”  has  grown 
under  a  system  which  condemned  the  masses  to 
toil  all  the  day  long,  and  all  the  life  long,  at  the 
same  wearisome  kind  of  labour.  But  if  we  take 
into  account  how  few  are  the  real  producers  of 
wealth  in  our  present  society,  and  how  squan¬ 
dered  is  their  labour,  we  must  recognise  that 
Franklin  was  right  in  saying  that  to  work  five 
hours  a  day  would  generally  do  for  supplying  each 
member  of  a  civilised  nation  with  the  comfort 
now  accessible  for  the  few  only. 

But  we  have  made  some  progress  sinice  Frank¬ 
lin’s  time, and  some  of  that  progress  in  the  hither¬ 
to  most  backward  branch  of  production — agri- 


408 


BRAIN  WORK  AND 


culture — has  been  indicated  in  the  preceding 
pages.  Even  in  that  branch  the  productivity 
of  labour  can  be  immensely  increased,  and  work 
itself  rendered  easy  and  pleasant.  If  everyone 
took  his  share  of  production,  and  if  production 
•were  socialised — as  political  economy,  if  it  aimed 
at  the  satisfaction  of  the  ever-growing  needs 
of  all,  would  advise  us  to  do — then  more  than 
one  half  of  the  working  day  would  remain  to 
everyone  for  the  pursuit  of  art,  science,  or  any 
hobby  he  or  she  might  prefer  ;  and  his  work  in 
those  fields  would  be  the  more  profitable  if  he 
spent  the  other  half  of  the  day  in  productive 
work — if  art  and  science  were  followed  from 
mere  inclination,  not  for  mercantile  purposes. 
Moreover,  a  community  organised  on  the  prin¬ 
ciples  of  all  being  workers  would  be  rich  enough 
to  conclude  that  every  man  and  woman,  after 
having  reached  a  certain  age — say  of  forty  or 
more — ought  to  be  relieved  from  the  moral 
obligation  of  taking  a  direct  part  in  the  perform¬ 
ance  of  the  necessary  manual  work,  so  as  to  be 

able  entirely  to  devote  himself  or  herself  to 
«/ 

whatever  he  or  she  chooses  in  the  domain  of 
art,  or  science,  or  any  kind  of  work.  Free  pur¬ 
suit  in  new  branches  of  art  and  knowledge,  free 
creation,  and  free  development  thus  might  be 
folly  guaranteed.  And  such  a  community 
would  not  know  misery  amidst  wealth.  It  would 


MANUAL  WORK. 


409 


not  know  the  duality  of  conscience  which  per¬ 
meates  our  life  and  stifles  every  noble  effort. 
It  would  freely  take  its  flight  towards  the  highest 
regions  of  progress  compatible  with  human 
nature. 


CHAPTER  IX. 


CONCLUSION. 

READERS  who  have  had  the  patience  to 
follow  the  facts  accumulated  in  this  book, 
especially  those  who  have  given  them  a  thought¬ 
ful  attention,  will  probably  feel  convinced  of  the 
immense  powers  over  the  productive  forces  of 
Nature  that  man  has  acquired  within  the  last 
half  a  century.  Comparing  the  achievements 
indicated  in  this  book  with  the  present  state  of 
production,  some  will,  I  hope,  also  ask  them¬ 
selves  the  question  which  will  be  ere  long,  let 
us  hope,  the  main  object. of  a  scientific  political 
economy  :  Are  the  means  now  in  use  for  satis- ' 
fying  human  needs,  under  the  present  system 
of  permanent  division  of  functions  and  produc¬ 
tion  for  profits,  really  economical  ?  Do  they 
really  lead  to  economy  in  the  expenditure  of 
human  forces  ?  Or,  are  they  not  mere  wasteful 
survivals  from  a  past  that  was  plunged  into 
darkness,  ignorance  and  oppression,  and  never 


CONCLUSION.  411 

took  into  consideration  the  economical  and 
social  value  of  the  human  being  ? 

In  the  domain  of  agriculture  it  may  be  taken 
as  proved  that  if  a  small  part  only  of  the  time  that 
is  now  given  in  each  nation  or  region  to  field 
culture  was  given  to  well  thought  out  and  socially 
carried  out  permanent  improvements  of  the  soil, 
the  duration  of  work  which  would  be  required 
afterwards  to  grow  the  yearly  bread-food  for 
an  average  family  of  five  would  be  less  than  a 
fortnight  every  year  ;  and  that  the  work  re¬ 
quired  for  that  purpose  would  not  be  the  hard 
toil  of  the  ancient  slave,  but  work  which  would 
be  agreeable  to  the  physical  forces  of  every 
healthy  man  and  woman  in  the  country. 

It  has  been  proved  that  by  following  the 
methods  of  intensive  market-gardening — partly 
under  glass — vegetables  and  fruit  can  be  grown 
in  such  quantities  that  men  could  be  provided 
with  a  rich  vegetable  food  and  a  profusion  of 
fruit,  if  they  simply  devoted  to  the  task  of 
growing  them  the  hours  which  everyone  willingly 
devotes  to  work  in  the  open  air,  after  having 
spent  most  of  his  day  in  the  factory,  the  mine, 
or  the  study.  Provided,  of  course,  that  the  ' 
production  of  food-stuffs  should  not  be  the  work 
of  the  isolated  individual,  but  the  planned-out 
and  combined  action  of  human  groups. 

It  has  also  been  proved — and  those  who  care 


412  CONCLUSION 

to  verify  it  by  themselves  may  easily  do  so  by 
calculating  the  real  expenditure  for  labour 
which  was  lately  made  in  the  building  of  work¬ 
men’s  houses  by  both  private  persons  and 
municipalities  * — that  under  a  proper  combina¬ 
tion  of  labour,  twenty  to  twenty-four  months  of 
one  man’s  work  would  be  sufficient  to  secure  for 
ever,  for  a  family  of  five,  an  apartment  or  a 
house  provided  with  all  the  comforts  which 
modern  hygiene  and  taste  could  require. 

And  it  has  been  demonstrated  by  actual  ex¬ 
periment  that,  by  adopting  methods  of  education, 
advocated  long  since  and  partially  applied  here 
and  there,  it  is  most  easy  to  convey  to  children 
of  an  average  intelligence,  before  they  have 
reached  the  age  of  fourteen  or  fifteen,  a  broad 
general  comprehension  of  Nature,  as  well  as  of 
human  societies ;  to  familiarise  their  minds 
with  sound  methods  of  both  scientific  research 
and  technical  work,  and  inspire  their  hearts  with 
a  deep  feeling  of  human  solidarity  and  justice ; 
and  that  it  is  extremely  easy  to  convey  during 
the  next  four  or  five  years  a  reasoned,  scientific 

*  These  figures  may  be  computed,  for  instance,  from  the  data 
contained  in  “  The  Ninth  Annual  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of 
Labour  of  the  United  States,  for  the  year  1893  :  Building  and 
Loan  Associations.”  In  this  country  the  cost  of  a  workman’s 
cottage  is  reckoned  at  about  £200,  which  would  represent  700 
to  800  days  of  labour.  But  we  must  not  forget  how  much  of 
this  sum  is  a  toll  raised  by  the  capitalists  and  the  landlords 
upon  everything  that  is  used  in  building  the  cottage  :  the  bricks 
and  tiles,  the  mortar,  the  wood,  the  iron,  etc. 


CONCLUSION.  413 

knowledge  of  Nature’s  laws,  as  well  as  a  know¬ 
ledge,  at  once  reasoned  and  practical,  of  the 
technical  methods  of  satisfying  man’s  material 
needs.  Far  from  being  inferior  to  the  “  special¬ 
ised  ”  young  persons  manufactured  by  our  uni¬ 
versities,  the  complete,  human  being,  trained  to 
use  his  brain  and  his  hands,  excels  them,  on  the 
contrary,  in  all  respects,  especially  as  an  initiator 
and  an  inventor  in  both  science  and  technics. 

All  this  has  been  proved.  It  is  an  acquisition 
of  the  times  we  live  in — an  acquisition  which  has 
been  won  despite  the  innumerable  obstacles 
always  thrown  in  the  way  of  every  initiative 
mind.  It  has  been  won  by  the  obscure  tillers  of 
the  soil,  from  whose  hands  greedy  States,  land¬ 
lords  and  middlemen  snatch  the  fruit  of  their 
labour  even  before  it  is  ripe  ;  by  obscure  teachers 
who  only  too  often  fall  crushed  under  the  weight 
of  Church,  State,  commercial  competition,  inertia 
of  mind  and  prejudice. 

And  now,  in  the  presence  of  all  these  con¬ 
quests — what  is  the  reality  of  things  ? 

Nine-tenths  of  the  whole  population  of  grain¬ 
exporting  countries  like  Russia,  one-half  of  it 
in  countries  like  France  which  live  on  home¬ 
grown  food,  work  upon  the  land — most  of  them 
in  the  same  way  as  the  slaves  of  antiquity  did, 
only  to  obtain  a  meagre  crop  from  a  soil,  and  with 
a  machinery  which  they  cannot  improve,  because 


414 


CONCLUSION. 


taxation,  rent  and  usury  keep  them  always  as 
near  as  possible  to  the  margin  of  starvation.  In 
this  twentieth  century,  whole  populations  still 
plough  with  the  same  plough  as  their  mediaeval 
ancestors,  live  in  the  same  incertitude  of  the 
morrow,  and  are  as  carefully  denied  education 
as  their  ancestors ;  and  they  have,  in  claiming 
their  portion  of  bread,  to  march  with  their 
children  and  wives  against  their  own  sons’ 
bayonets,  as  their  grandfathers  did  hundreds  of 
years  ago. 

In  industrially  developed  countries,  a  couple 
of  months’  work,  or  even  much  less  than  that, 
would  be  sufficient  to  produce  for  a  family  a  rich 
and  varied  vegetable  and  animal  food.  But  the 
researches  of  Engel  (at  Berlin)  and  his  many 
followers  tell  us  that  the  workman’s  family  has 
to  spend  one  full  half  of  its  yearly  earnings — 
that  is,  to  give  six  months  of  labour,  and  often 
more — to  provide  its  food.  And  what  food  ! 
Is  not  bread  and  dripping  the  staple  food  of 
more  than  one-half  of  English  children  ? 

One  month  of  work  every  year  would  be  quite 
sufficient  to  provide  the  worker  with  a  healthy 
dwelling.  But  it  is  from  25  to  40  per  cent,  of 
his  yearly  earnings — that  is,  from  three  to  five 
months  of  his  working  time  every  year — that 
he  has  to  spend  in  order  to  get  a  dwelling,  in 
most  cases  unhealthy  and  far  too  small ;  and 


CONCLUSION. 


415 


this  dwelling  will  never  be  his  own,  even  though 
at  the  age  of  forty-five  or  fifty  he  is  sure  to  be 
sent  away  from  the  factory,  because  the  work 
that  he  used  to  do  will  by  that  time  be  accom¬ 
plished  by  a  machine  and  a  child. 

We  all  know  that  the  child  ought,  at  least,  to 
be  familiarised  with  the  forces  of  Nature  which 
some  day  he  will  have  to  utilise  ;  that  he  ought 
to  be  prepared  to  keep  pace  in  his  life  with  the 
steady  progress  of  science  and  technics  ;  that  he 
ought  to  study  science  and  learn  a  trade.  Every¬ 
one  will  grant  thus  much  ;  but  what  do  we  do  ? 
From  the  age  of  ten  or  even  nine  we  send  the 
child  to  push  a  coal-cart  in  a  mine,  or  to  bind, 
with  a  little  monkey’s  agility,  the  two  ends  of 
threads  broken  in  a  spinning  gin.  From  the 
age  of  thirteen  we  compel  the  girl — a  child  yet — 
to  work  as  a  “  woman  ”  at  the  weaving-loom, 
or  to  stew  in  the  poisoned,  over-heated  air  of  a 
cotton-dressing  factory,  or,  perhaps,  to  be  poi¬ 
soned  in  the  death  chambers  of  a  Staffordshire 
pottery.  As  to  those  who  have  the  relatively 
rare  luck  of  receiving  some  more  education,  we 
crush  their  minds  by  useless  overtime,  we  con¬ 
sciously  deprive  them  of  all  possibility  of  them¬ 
selves  becoming  producers  ;  and  under  an 
educational  system  of  which  the  motive  is  “  pro¬ 
fits,”  and  the  means  “  specialisation,”  we  simply 
work  to  death  the  women  teachers  who  take 


416 


CONCLUSION. 


their  educational  duties  in  earnest.  What  floods 
of  useless  sufferings  deluge  every  so-called  civi¬ 
lised  land  in  the  world  ! 

When  we  look  back  on  ages  past,  and  see  there 
the  same  sufferings,  we  may  say  that  perhaps 
then  they  were  unavoidable  on  account  of  the 
ignorance  which  prevailed.  But  human  genius, 
stimulated  by  our  modern  Renaissance,  has 
already  indicated  new  paths  to  follow. 

For  thousands  of  years  in  succession  to  grow 
one’s  food  was  the  burden,  almost  the  curse, 
of  mankind.  But  it  need  be  so  no  more.  If 
you  make  yourselves  the  soil,  and  partly  the 
temperature  and  the  moisture  which  each  crop 
requires,  you  will  see  that  to  grow  the  yearly 
food  of  a  family,  under  rational  conditions  of 
culture,  requires  so  little  labour  that  it  might 
almost  be  done  as  a  mere  change  from  other 
pursuits.  If  you  return  to  the  soil,  and  co-ope¬ 
rate  with  your  neighbours  instead  of  erecting 
high  walls  to  conceal  yourself  from  their  looks  ; 
if  you  utilise  what  experiment  has  already 
taught  us,  and  call  to  your  aid  science  and 
technical  invention,  which  never  fail  to  answer 
to  the  call — look  only  at  what  they  have  done  for 
warfare — you  will  be  astonished  at  the  facility 
with  which  you  can  bring  a  rich  and  varied  food 
out  of  the  soil.  You  will  admire  the  amount 
of  sound  knowledge  which  your  children  will 


417 


CONCLUSION. 

acquire  by  your  side,  the  rapid  growth  of  their 
intelligence,  and  the  facility  with  which  they 
will  grasp  the  laws  of  Nature,  animate  and  in¬ 
animate. 

Have  the  factory  and  the  workshop  lat  the 
gates  of  your  fields  and  gardens,  and  work  in 
them.  Not  those  large  establishments,  of  course, 
in  which  huge  masses  of  metals  have  to  be  dealt 
with  and  which  are  better  placed  at  certain 
spots  indicated  by  Nature,  but  the  countless 
variety  of  workshops  and  factories  which  are 
required  to  satisfy  the  infinite  diversity  of  tastes 
among  civilised  men.  Not  those  factories  in 
which  children  lose  all  the  appearance  of  children 
in  the  atmosphere  of  an  industrial  hell,  but  those 
airy  and  hygienic,  and  consequently  economical, 
factories  in  which  human  life  is  of  more  account 
than  machinery  and  the  making  of  extra  profits, 
of  which  we  already  find  a  few  samples  here  and 
there  ;  factories  and  workshops  into  which  men, 
women  and  children  will  not  be  driven  by 
hunger,  but  will  be  attracted  by  the  desire  of 
finding  an  activity  suited  to  their  tastes,  and 
where,  aided  by  the  motor  and  the  machine,  they 
will  choose  the  branch  of  activity  which  best 
suits  their  inclinations. 

Let  those  factories  and  workshops  be  erected, 
not  for  making  profits  by  selling  shoddy  or  use¬ 
less  and  noxious  things  to  enslaved  Africans,  but 

14 


418 


CONCLUSION. 


to  satisfy  the  unsatisfied  needs  of  millions  of 
Europeans.  And  again,  you  will  be  struck  to 
see  with  what  facility  and  in  how  short  a  time 
your  needs  of  dress  and  of  thousands  of  articles 
of  luxury  can  be  satisfied,  when  production  is 
carried  on  for  satisfying  real  needs  rather  than 
for  satisfying  shareholders  by  high  profits  or  for 
pouring  gold  into  the  pockets  of  promoters  and 
bogus  directors.  Very  soon  you  will  yourselves 
feel  interested  in  that  work,  and  you  will  have 
occasion  to  admire  in  your  children  their  eager 
desire  to  become  acquainted  with  Nature  and 
its  forces,  their  inquisitive  inquiries  as  to  the 
powers  of  machinery,  and  their  rapidly  develop¬ 
ing  inventive  genius. 

Such  is  the  future — already  possible,  already 
realisable  ;  such  is  the  present — already  con¬ 
demned  and  about  to  disappear.  And  what 
prevents  us  from  turning  our  backs  to  this  present 
and  from  marching  towards  that  future,  or,  at 
least,  making  the  first  steps  towards  it,  is  not 
the  “  failure  of  science,”  but  first  of  all  our  crass 
cupidity — the  cupidity  of  the  man  who  killed 
the  hen  that  was  laying  golden  eggs — and  then 
our  laziness  of  mind — that  mental  cowardice  so 
carefully  nurtured  in  the  past. 

For  centuries  science  and  so-called  practical 
wisdom  have  said  to  man  :  “  It  is  good  to  be 
rich,  to  be  able  to  satisfy,  at  least,  your  material 


CONCLUSION.  419 

needs  ;  but  the  only  means  to  be  rich  is  to  so 
train  your  mind  and  capacities  as  to  be  able  to 
compel  other  men — slaves,  serfs  or  wage-earners 
— to  make  these  riches  for  you.  You  have  no 
choice.  Either  you  must  stand  in  the  ranks  of 
the  peasants  and  the  artisans  who,  whatsoever 
economists  and  moralists  may  promise  them  in 
the  future,  are  now  periodically  doomed  to 
starve  after  each  bad  crop  or  during  their  strikes, 
and  to  be  shot  down  by  their  own  sons  the 
moment  they  lose  patience.  Or  you  must  train 
your  faculties  so  as  to  be  a  military  commander 
of  the  masses,  or  to  be  accepted  as  one  of  the 
wheels  of  the  governing  machinery  of  the  State, 
or  to  become  a  manager  of  men  in  commerce  or 
industry.”  For  many  centuries  there  was  no 
other  choice,  and  men  followed  that  advice, 
without  finding  in  it  happiness,  either  for  them¬ 
selves  and  their  own  children,  or  for  those  whom 
they  pretended  to  preserve  from  worse  mis¬ 
fortunes. 

But  modern  knowledge  has  another  issue  to 
offer  to  thinking  men.  It  tells  them  that  in 
order  to  be  rich  they  need  not  take  the  bread 
from  the  mouths  of  others  ;  but  that  the  more 
rational  outcome  would  be  a  society  in  which 
men,  with  the  work  of  their  own  hands  and  in¬ 
telligence,  and  by  the  aid  of  the  machinery 
already  invented  and  to  be  invented,  should 


420 


CONCLUSION. 


themselves  create  all  imaginable  riches.  Tech¬ 
nics  and  science  will  not  be  lagging  behind  if 
production  takes  such  a  direction.  Guided  by 
observation,  analysis  and  experiment,  they  will 
answer  all  possible  demands.  They  will  reduce 
the  time  which  is  necessary  for  producing  wealth 
to  any  desired  amount,  so  as  to  leave  to  every¬ 
one  as  much  leisure  as  he  or  she  may  ask  for. 
They  surely  cannot  guarantee  happiness,  be¬ 
cause  happiness  depends  as  much,  or  even  more, 
upon  the  individual  himself  as  upon  his  sur¬ 
roundings.  But  they  guarantee,  at  least,  the 
happiness  that  can  be  found  in  the  full  and 
varied  exercise  of  the  different  capacities  of  the 
human  being,  in  work  that  need  not  be  over¬ 
work,  and  in  the  consciousness  that  one  is  not 
endeavouring  to  base  his  own  happiness  upon 
the  misery  of  others. 

These  are  the  horizons  which  the  above  inquiry 
opens  to  the  unprejudiced  mind. 


APPENDIX. 


A. — BRITISH  INVESTMENTS  ABROAD. 


HE  important  question  as  to  the  amount  of  British 


A  capital  invested  in  the  colonies  and  in  othel: 
countries  has  only  quite  lately  received  due  attention. 
For  the  last  ten  years  or  so  one  could  find  in  the 
“  Reports  of  the  Commissioner  of  Inland  Revenue  ” 
a  mention  of  the  revenue  derived  from  British  capital 
invested  in  foreign  loans  to  States  and  Municipalities 
and  in  railway  companies  ;  but  these  returns  were 
still  incomplete.  Consequently,  Mr.  George  Paish 
made  in  1909  and  1911  an  attempt  at  determining  these 
figures  with  more  accuracy  in  two  papers  which  he 
read  before  the  Statistical  Society.* 

Mr.  Paish  based  his  researches  on  the  Income  Tax, 
completing  these  data  by  special  researches  about 
private  investments,  which  do  not  appear  in  the 
Income  Tax  returns.  He  has  not  yet  got  to  the  end 
of  his  investigation ;  but,  all  taken,  he  estimates  that 
the  yearly  income  received  by  this  country  from  abroad 
from  different  sources  reaches  £300,000,000  every  year. 

*  “  Great  Britain’s  Capital  Investments  in  Other  Lands  ” 
(, Journal  of  the  Statistical  Society,  September  1909,  vol.  lxxii.,  pp. 
475-495),  followed  by  a  most  interesting  discussion ;  and  “  Great 
Britain’s  Capital  Investments  in  India,  Colonial  and  Foreign 
Countries,”  same  journal,  January  1911,  vol.  Ixxiv.,  pp.  167-200. 


422 


APPENDIX. 


B.— FRENCH  IMPORTS. 

About  one-tenth  part  of  the  cereals  consumed  in 
France  is  still  imported ;  but,  as  will  be  seen  in  a 
subsequent  chapter,  the  progress  in  agriculture  has 
lately  been  so  rapid  that  even  without  Algeria  France 
will  soon  have  a  surplus  of  cereals.  Wine  is  imported, 
but  nearly  as  much  is  exported.  So  that  coffee  and 
oil-seeds  remain  the  only  food  articles  of  durable  im¬ 
portance  for  import.  For  coal  and  coke  France  is  still 
tributary  to  Belgium,  to  this  country,  and  to  Germany  ; 
but  it  is  chiefly  the  inferiority  of  organisation  of  coal 
extraction  which  stands  in  the  way  of  the  home  supply. 
The  other  important  items  of  imports  are  :  raw  cotton 
(from  £12,440,000  to  £18,040,000  in  1903-1910),  raw 
wool  (from  £15,160,000  to  £23,200,000),  and  raw  silk 
(from  £10,680,000  to  £17,640,000),  as  well  as  hides  and 
furs,  oil-seeds,  and  machinery  (about  £10,000,000). 
The  exports  of  manufactured  goods  were  £80,000,000 
in  1890,  and  in  subsequent  years  from  £119,000,000 
to  £137,000,000.  Exports  of  textiles,  exclusive  of  yarn 
and  linen,  £29,800,000  in  1890,  and  £34,440,000  in 
1908-1910 ;  while  the  imports  of  all  textiles  are  in¬ 
significant  (from  £5,000,000  to  £7,000,000). 


C.— GROWTH  OF  INDUSTRY  IN  RUSSIA. 


The  growth  of  industry  in  Russia  will  be  best  seen 
from  the  following  : — 


Cast  iron  . 
Iron  . 
Steel  . 


1880-81. 

Owts. 

8,810,000 

5,770,000 

6,030,000 


1893-94. 

Owts. 

25,450,000 
9,700,000  \ 
9,610,000  J 


1910. 

Owts. 


61,867,000 


61,540,700 


APPENDIX.  423 


Railway  rails 

Coal . 

(Imports  of  Coal)  . 
Naphtha  . 

Sugar  . 

Raw  cotton,  home 
grown  .... 
Cottons,  grey,  and 
yarn  .... 
Cottons,  printed 


1880-81. 

1893-94. 

1910. 

Cwts. 

Cwts. 

Cwts. 

3,960,000 

4,400,000 

10,408,300 

64,770,000 

160,000,000 

530,570,000 

from 

80,000,000  tc 

►  100,000,000 

6,900,000 

108,700,000 

189,267,000 

5,030,000 

11,470,000 

28,732,000 

293,000 

1,225,000 

3,736,000 

23,640,000 

42,045,000 

'  86,950,000 

6,160,000 

7,720,000 

37,680,000 

1900.  1908. 

All  cottons . £56,156,000  £94,233,000 

All  woollens .  19,064,000  25,388,000 


Linen  .  7,076,600  9,969,000 

Silk .  3,335,000  3,969,000 


The  recent  growth  of  the  coal  and  iron  industries  in 
South  Russia  (with  the  aid  of  Belgian  capital)  was  very 
well  illustrated  at  the  Turin  Exhibition  of  1911.  From 
less  than  100,000  tons  in  1860,  the  extraction  of  coal  and 
anthracite  rose  to  16,840,460  metric  tons  in  1910.  The 
extraction  of  iron  ore  rose  from  377,000  tons  in  1890 
to  3,760,000  tons  in  1909.  The  production  of  cast  iron, 
which  was  only  29,270  tons  in  1882,  reached  2,067,000 
tons  in  1910,  and  the  amount  of  refined  iron  and  steel  and 
their  produce  rose  from  27,830  tons  in  1882  to  1,641,960 
tons  in  1910.  In  short,  South  Russia  is  becoming  an 
exporting  centre  for  the  iron  industry.  (P.  Palcinsky, 
in  Russian  Mining  Journal,  1911,  Nos.  8  and  12.) 

D.— IRON  INDUSTRY  IN  GERMANY. 

The  following  tables  will  give  some  idea  of  the  growth 
of  mining  and  metallurgy  in  Germany. 

The  extraction  of  minerals  in  the  German  Empire, 
in  metric  tons,  which  are  very  little  smaller  than  the 
English  ton  (0984),  was  : — 


424 


APPENDIX. 


1883.  1893.  1910. 

Tons.  Tons.  Tons. 

Coal .  55,943,000  76,773,000  152,881,500 

Lignite  ....  14,481,000  22,103,000  69,104,900 

Iron  ore  ....  8,616,000  12,404,000  28,709,700 

Zinc  ore  ...  .  678,000  729,000  718,300 

Mineral  salts  (chiefly 

potash)  .  .  .  1,526,000  2,379,000  9,735,700 

Since  1894  the  iron  industry  has  taken  a  formidable 
development,  the  production  of  pig-iron  reaching 

12.644.900  metric  tons  in  1909  (14,793,600  in  1910), 
and  that  of  half-finished  and  finished  iron  and  steel, 

14.186.900  tons  ;  while  the  exports  of  raw  iron,  which 
were  valued  at  £1,195,000  in  1903,  doubled  in  seven 
years,  reaching  £2,250,000  in  1910. 

E.— MACHINERY  IN  GERMANY. 

The  rapid  progress  in  the  fabrication  of  machinery 
in  Germany  is  best  seen  from  the  growth  of  the 
German  exports  as  shown  by  the  following  table  : — 

1890.  1895.  1907. 

Machines  and  parts 

thereof . £2,450,000  £3,215,000  £17,482,500 

Sewing-machines  and 

parts  thereof  .  .  .  315,000  430,000  1,202,500 

Locomotives  and  loco¬ 
mobiles  ....  280,000  420,000  1,820,000 

Three  years  later  the  first  of  these  items  had  already 
reached  £25,000,000,  and  the  export  of  bicycles,  motor¬ 
cars,  and  motor-buses,  and  parts  thereof,  was  valued  at 
£2,904,000. 

Everyone  knows  that  German  sewing  -  machines, 
motor-bus  frames,  and  a  considerable  amount  of  tools 
find  their  way  even  into  this  country,  and  that  German 
tools  are  plainly  recommended  in  English  books. 


APPENDIX. 


425 


F.— COTTON  INDUSTRY  IN  GERMANY. 


Dr.  G.  Schulze-Gaewernitz,  in  liis  excellent  work, 
The  Cotton  Trade  in  England  and  on  the  Continent 
(English  translation  by  Oscar  S.  Hall,  London,  1895), 
called  attention  to  the  fact  that  Germany  had  certainly 
not  yet  attained,  in  her  cotton  industry,  the  high 
technical  level  of  development  attained  by  England  ; 
but  he  showed  also  the  progress  realised.  The  cost 
of  each  yard  of  plain  cotton,  notwithstanding  low  wages 
and  long  hours,  was  still  greater  in  Germany  than  in 
England,  as  seen  from  the  following  tables.  Taking  a 
certain  quality  of  plain  cotton  in  both  countries,  he 
gave  (p.  151,  German  edition)  the  following  comparative 
figures  : — 


Hours  of  labour . 

Average  weekly  earnings  of  the 

operatives . 

Yards  woven  per  week  per  opera¬ 
tive  . 

Cost  per  yard  of  cotton  . 


England. 

Germany. 

9  hours 

12  hours 

16s.  3d. 

11s.  8d. 

706  yards 

466  yards 

0*275d. 

0*303d. 

But  he  remarked  also  that  in  all  sorts  of  printed 
cottons,  in  which  fancy,  colours  and  invention  play  a 
predominant  part,  the  advantages  were  entirely  on  the 
side  of  the  smaller  German  factories. 

In  the  spinning  mills  the  advantages,  on  the  con¬ 
trary,  continued  to  remain  entirely  on  the  side  of  Eng¬ 
land,  the  number  of  operatives  per  1,000  spindles  being 
in  various  countries  as  follows  (p.  91,  English  edition)  : — 


Per  1000  spindles. 

Bombay . 25  operatives. 

Italy . 13  „ 

Alsace . „ 

Mulhouse . 7£  „ 


426 


APPENDIX. 


Germany,  1861  . 
„  1882  . 


England,  1837  . 


1887 


Per  1000  spindles. 
20  operatives. 
8  to  9  ,, 


Considerable  improvements  bad  taken  place  already 
in  tbe  ten  years  1884-1894.  “  India  shows  us,  since 
1884,  extraordinary  developments,”  Schulze-Gaewernitz 
remarked,  and  “  there  is  no  doubt  that  Germany  also 
has  reduced  the  number  of  operatives  per  1,000  spindles 
since  the  last  Inquest.”  “  From  a  great  quantity  of 
materials  lying  before  me,  I  cull,”  he  wrote,  “  the 
following,  which,  however,  refers  solely  to  leading  and 
technically  distinguished  spinning  mills  : — 


Per  1000  spindles. 

Switzerland . 6-2  operatives. 

Mulhouse . 5‘8  ,, 

Baden  and  Wiirtemberg . 6-2  ,, 

Bavaria . 6-8  ,, 

Saxony  (new  and  splendid  mills)  .  .  7'2  ,, 

Vosges,  France  (old  spinning  mills] .  .  8-9  ,, 

Russia . 16-6  ,, 


The  average  counts  of  yam  for  all  these  were  between 
twenties  and  thirties.” 

It  is  evident  that  considerable  progress  has  been 
realised  since  Schulze-Gaewernitz  wrote  these  lines. 
As  an  exporter  of  cotton  yarn  and  cottons,  Germany 
has  made  rapid  strides.  Thus,  in  1903,  she  exported 
£1,625,000  worth  of  cotton  yarn,  and  £15,080,000 
worth  of  cottons.  For  1910  the  figures  given  by  the 
Statistisches  Jahrbuch  for  1911  were  already  £2,740,000 
and  £18,255,000  respectively. 


APPENDIX. 


427 


G.— MINING  AND  TEXTILES  IN  AUSTRIA. 

To  give  an  idea  of  the  development  of  industries  in 
Austria-Hungary,  it  is  sufficient  to  mention  the  growth 
of  her  mining  industries  and  the  present  state  of  her 
textile  industries. 

The  value  of  the  yearly  extraction  of  coal  and  iron 
ore  in  Austria  appears  as  follows  : — 

1880.  1890.  1910. 

Coal . £1,611,000  £25,337,000  £57,975,000 

Brown  coal  .  .  .  1,281,300  23,033,000  56,715,000 

Raw  iron  .  .  .  1,749,000  22,759,000  49,367,000 

At  the  present  time  the  exports  of  coal  entirely 
balance  the  imports. 

As  to  the  textile  industries,  the  imports  of  raw 
cotton  into  Austria-Hungary  reached  in  1907  the 
respectable  value  of  £12,053,400.  Eor  raw  wool  and 
wool  yarn  they  were  £6,055,600  worth,  and  for  silk, 
£1,572,000 ;  while  £3,156,200  worth  of  wobllens  were 
exported. 

According  to  the  census  of  1902  (Statistisches  J ahrbuch 
for  1911),  there  were  already,  in  Austria-Hungary, 
1,408,855  industrial  establishments,  occupying  4,049,320 
workpeople,  and  having  a  machinery  representing 
1,787,900  horse-power.  The  textile  trades  alone  had 
in  their  service  257,500  horse-power  (as  against  113,280 
in  1890). 

The  small  industry  evidently  prevailed,  nearly  one- 
half  of  all  the  workpeople  (2,066,120)  being  employed 
in  901,202  establishments,  which  had  only  from  one 
to  twenty  persons  each  ;  while  443,235  workpeople 
were  employed  in  10,661  establishments  (from  twenty- 
one  to  100  workpeople  each).  Still,  the  great  industry 


428  APPENDIX. 

has  already  made  its  appearance  in  some  branches — 
there  being  3,021  establishments  which  employed 
more  than  100  workers  each,  and  representing  an 
aggregate  of  1,053,790  workpeople.  Out  of  them 
105  establishments  employed  even  more  than  1,000 
persons  each  (115  establishments,  179,876  workpeople 
in  1910). 

In  Hungary  industry  is  also  rapidly  developing ;  it 
occupied  1,127,130  persons  in  1902  (34,160  in  the  tex¬ 
tiles,  and  74,000  in  mining).  In  1910  the  exports  of  all 
textiles  (stuffs  and  yarns)  from  Hungary  reached  the 
sum  of  £7,040,500. 


H.— COTTON  MANUFACTUEE  IN  INDIA. 

The  views  taken  in  the  text  about  the  industrial 
development  of  India  are  confirmed  by  a  mass  of 
evidence.  One  of  them,  coming  from  authorised 
quarters,  deserves  special  attention.  In  an  article  on 
the  progress  of  the  Indian  cotton  manufacture,  the 
Textile  Recorder  (15th  October,  1888)  wrote  : — 

“  No  person  connected  with  the  cotton  industry  can 
be  ignorant  of  the  rapid  progress  of  the  cotton  manu¬ 
facture  in  India.  Statistics  of  all  kinds  have  recently 
been  brought  before  the  public,  showing  the  increase 
of  production  in  the  country ;  still  it  does  not  seem 
to  be  clearly  understood  that  this  increasing  output  of 
cotton  goods  must  seriously  lower  the  demand  upon 
Lancashire  mills,  and  that  it  is  not  by  any  means 
improbable  that  India  may  at  no  very  distant  period 
be  no  better  customer  than  the  United  States  is 
now.” 

One  hardly  need  add  at  what  price  the  Indian 
manufacturers  obtain  cheap  cottons.  The  report  of 


429 


APPENDIX. 

the  Bombay  Factory  Commission  which  was  laid 
before  Parliament  in  August,  1888,  contained  facts 
of  such  horrible  cruelty  and  cupidity  as  would  hardly 
be  imagined  by  those  who  have  forgotten  the  dis¬ 
closures  of  the  inquiry  made  in  this  country  in  1840- 
1842.  The  factory  engines  are  at  work,  as  a  rule,  from 
5  a.m.  till  7,  8,  or  9  p.m.,  and  the  workers  remain  at 
work  for  twelve,  thirteen,  fourteen  hours,  only  re¬ 
leasing  one  another  for  meals.  In  busy  times  it 
happens  that  the  same  set  of  workers  remain  at  the 
gins  and  presses  night  and  day  witlv  half  an  hour’s 
rest  in  the  evening.  In  some  factories  the  workers 
have  their  meals  at  the  gins,  and  are  so  worn  out 
after  eight  and  ten  days’  uninterrupted  work 
that  they  supply  the  gins  mechanically  “  three  parts 
asleep.” 

“It  is  a  sad  tale  of  great  want  on  one  side,  and 
cruel  cupidity  on  the  other,”  the  official  report  con¬ 
cludes.  However,  it  would  be  absolutely  erroneous 
to  conclude  that  Indian  manufactures  can  compete 
with  the  British  ones  as  long  as  they  continue  the 
terrible  exploitation  of  human  labour  which  we  see 
now.  Forty  years  ago  the  British  manufactures 
offered  absolutely  the  same  terrible  picture  of  cruel 
cupidity.  But  times  will  come  when  India#  workers 
will  restrain  the  cupidity  of  the  capitalists,  and  the 
manufacturers  of  Bombay  will  be  none  the  worse  for 
that  in  their  competition  with  the  British  manu¬ 
factures. 

The  figures  relative  to  the  latest  growth  of  the 
textile  industries  in  India,  given  in  the  text,  fully 
confirm  the  previsions  expressed  twenty-five  years 
ago.  As  to  the  conditions  of  the  workpeople  in 
the  Indian  cotton-mills,  they  continue  to  remain 
abominable. 


430 


APPENDIX. 


I.— THE  COTTON  INDUSTKY  IN  THE  UNITED 

STATES. 

A  few  years  ago  the  cotton  industry  in  the  United 
States  attracted  the  attention  of  the  Manchester 
cotton  manufacturers,  and  we  have  now  two  very 
interesting  works  written  by  persons  who  went  specially 
to  the  States  in  order  to  study  the  rapid  progress  made 
there  in  spinning  and  weaving.* 

These  two  inquiries  fully  confirm  what  has  been 
said  in  the  text  of  this  book  about  the  rapid  progress 
made  in  the  American  industry  altogether,  and  es¬ 
pecially  in  the  development  of  a  very  fine  cotton¬ 
weaving  machinery.  In  his  preface  to  Mr.  Young’s 
book,  Mr.  Helm  says :  “  The  results  of  this  inquiry 
may  not  incorrectly  be  called  a  revelation  for  Lanca¬ 
shire.  It  was,  indeed,  already  known  to  a  few  on  this 
side  of  the  ocean  that  there  were  wide  differences 
between  the  methods  and  organisation  of  American  and 
English  cotton-mills.  But  it  is  only  between  the  last 
three  or  four  years  that  suspicion  has  arisen  amongst 
us  that  our  competitors  in  the  United  States  have  been 
marching  faster  than  we  have  in  the  path  of  economy 
of  production.” 

The  most  important  difference  between  the  British 
and  American  methods  was,  in  Mr.  Helm’s  opinion, 
in  “  the  extensive  use  of  the  automatic  loom.”  Mr. 
Young’s  investigation  on  the  subject  left  no  doubts 

*  T.  M.  Young,  The  American  Cotton  Industry.  Introduction 
by  Elijah  Helm,  secretary  to  the  Manchester  Chamber  of  Com¬ 
merce,  London  1902 ;  and  T.  W.  Uttlev,  Cotton  Spinning  and 
Manufacturing  in  the  United  States:  A  report  ...  of  a  tour 
of  the  American  cotton  manufacturing  centres  made  in  1903  and 
190Jf.  Publications  of  Manchester  University,  Economic  Series, 
No.  II.,  Manchester,  1905. 


APPENDIX.  431 

that  the  employment  of  this  loom  “  substantially  re¬ 
duces  the  cost  of  production,  and  at  the  same  time  in¬ 
creases  the  earnings  of  the  weaver,  because  it  permits 
him  to  conduct  more  looms  ”  (p.  15).  Altogether,  we 
learn  from  Mr.  Helm’s  remarks  that  there  are  now 
85,000  automatic  looms  running  in  the  United  States, 
and  that  “  the  demand  for  weavers  is  greater  than 
ever  ”  (p.  16).  In  a  Rhode  Island  mill,  743  ordinary 
looms  required  100  weavers,  while  2,000  Northrop 
(or  Draper)  looms  could  be  conducted  by  134  weavers 
only,  which  means  an  average  of  fifteen  looms  for 
each  weaver.  At  Burlington,  Vermont,  from  sixteen 
to  twenty  Northrop  looms  were  conducted  by  each 
weaver,  and  altogether  these  looms  are  spreading 
very  rapidly.  But  it  is  not  only  in  the  looms  that 
such  improvements  have  been  introduced.  “  The 
spinning  frames,”  we  are  told  by  Mr.  Young,  “con¬ 
taining  112  spindles  a  side,  were  tended  by  girls 
who  ran  four,  six,  eight,  or  ten  sides  each,  ac¬ 
cording  to  the  girl’s  dexterity.  The  average  for 
good  spinners  was  about  eight  sides  (896  spindles)  ” 
(P-  10). 

In  a  New  Bedford  fine-spinning  mill  the  ring-spinners 
were  minding  1,200  spindles  each  (p.  16). 

It  is  also  important  to  note  the  speed  at  which  the 
cotton  industry  has  been  developing  lately  in  the 
States.  The  census  of  1900  gave  a  total  of  19,008,350 
spindles.  But  in  1909  we  find  already  28,178,860 
spindles  for  cotton  alone  (34,500,000,  including  silk, 
wool,  and  worsted).  And,  what  is  still  more  important, 
most  of  this  increase  fell  upon  the  Southern  States, 
where  machinery  is  also  more  perfect,  both  for  spinning 
and  weaving,  and  where  most  of  the  work  is  being 
done  by  the  whites.  In  a  South  Carolina  print-cloth 
mill,  containing  1,000  Draper  looms,  the  average  for 


432  APPENDIX. 

narrow  looms  was  15  J  looms  to  each  weaver.  (T.  W. 
Uttley,  l.c.,  pp.  4,  50,  etc.) 

As  for  the  American  competition  in  the  Chinese 
markets,  Mr.  Helm  gives  imposing  figures. 

J.— MR.  GIFFEN’S  AND  MR.  FLUX’S  FIGURES 
CONCERNING  THE  POSITION  OF  THE 
UNITED  KINGDOM  IN  INTERNATIONAL 
TRADE. 

A  few  remarks  concerning  these  figures  may  be  of 
some  avail. 

When  a  sudden  fall  in  the  British  and  Irish  exports 
took  place  in  the  years  1882-1886,  and  the  alarmists 
took  advantage  of  the  bad  times  to  raise  the  never- 
forgotten  war-cry  of  protection,  especially  insisting  on 
the  damages  made  to  British  trade  by  “  German 
competition,”  Mr.  Giffen  analysed  the  figures  of  inter¬ 
national  trade  in  his  “  Finance  Essays,”  and  in  a 
report  read  in  1888  before  the  Board  of  Trade  Com¬ 
mission.  Subsequently,  Mr.  A.  W.  Flux  analysed 
again  the  same  figures,  extending  them  to  a  later 
period.  He  confirmed  Mr.  Giffen’s  conclusions  and  en¬ 
deavoured  to  prove  that  the  famous  “  German  com¬ 
petition  ”  is  a  fallacy. 

Mr.  Gifien’s  conclusions,  quoted  by  Mr.  A.  W.  Flux 
(“  The  Commercial  Supremacy  of  Great  Britain,”  in 
Economical  Journal ,  1894,  iv.,  p.  457),  were  as  follows  : — 

“  On  the  whole,  the  figures  are  not  such  as  to  in¬ 
dicate  any  great  and  overwhelming  advance  in  German 
exports,  in  comparison  with  those  of  the  United 
Kingdom.  There  is  greater  progress  in  certain  direc¬ 
tions,  but,  taken  altogether,  no  great  disproportionate 
advance,  and  in  many  important  markets  for  the 
United  Kingdom  Germany  hardly  appears  at  all.” 


APPENDIX.  433 

In  this  subdued  form,  with  regard  to  German  com- 
\ petition  alone — and  due  allowance  being  made  for 
figures  in  which  no  consideration  is  given  to  what 
sort  of  goods  make  a  given  value  of  exports,  and  in 
what  quantities — Mr.  Giffen’s  statement  could  be 
accepted.  But  that  was  all. 

If  we  take,  however,  Mr.  Giffen’s  figures  as  they  are 
reproduced  in  extended  tables  (on  pp.  461-467  of  the 
just  quoted  paper),  tabulated  with  great  pains  in  order 
to  show  that  Germany’s  part  in  the  imports  to  several 
European  countries,  such  as  Russia,  Italy,  Servia,  etc., 
had  declined,  as  well  as  the  part  of  the  United  Kingdom, 
all  we  could  conclude  from  these  figures  was,  that  there 
were  other  countries  besides  Germany — namely,  the 
United  States  and  Belgium — which  competed  very 
effectively  with  England,  France,  and  Germany  for 
supplying  what  manufactured  goods  were  taken  by 
Russia,  Italy,  Servia,  etc.,  from  abroad. 

At  the  same  time  such  figures  gave  no  idea  of  the 
fact  that  where  manufactured  metal  goods  were 
formerly  supplied,  coal  and  raw  metals  were  imported 
for  the  home  manufacture  of  those  same  goods  ;  or, 
where  dyed  and  printed  cottons  were  imported,  only 
yarn  was  required.  The  whole  subject  is  infinitely 
more  complicated  than  it  appeared  in  Mr.  Giffen’s 
calculations  ;  and,  valuable  as  his  figures  may  have 
been  for  appeasing  exaggerated  fears,  they  contained 
no  answer  whatever  to  the  many  economic  questions 
involved  in  the  matters  treated  by  Mr.  Giffen. 

The  conclusions  which  I  came  to  in  these  lines  in  the 
first  edition  of  this  book  found  further  confirmation  in 
the  subsequent  economical  development  of  all  nations 
in  that  same  direction.  The  result  is,  that — apart 
from  the  extraordinary  exports  of  the  years  1910  and 
1911  (which  I  venture  to  explain  by  the  general  pre- 


434  APPENDIX. 

vision  of  a  great  European  war  going  to  break  out) — 
the  exports  from  this  country,  apart  from  their  usual 
periodical  fluctuations,  continued  to  remain  what  they 
were,  in  proportion  to  the  increasing  population,  and 
many  of  them  became  less  profitable ;  while  the 
exports  from  all  other  countries  increased  in  a  much 
greater  proportion. 

K.— MARKET-GARDENING  IN  BELGIUM.  ‘ 

In  1885  the  superficies  given  to  market  gardening  in 
Belgium  was  99,600  acres.  In  1894  a  Belgian  professor 
of  agriculture,  who  has  kindly  supplied  me  with  notes 
on  this  subject,  wrote  : — 

“  The  area  has  considerably  increased,  and  I  believe 
it  can  be  taken  at  112,000  acres  (45,000  hectares),  if  not 
more.”  And  further  on  :  “  Rents  in  the  neighbour¬ 
hood  of  the  big  towns,  Antwerp,  Liege,  Ghent,  and 
Brussels,  attain  as  much  as  £5,  16s.  and  £8  per  acre  ; 
the  cost  of  instalment  is  from  £13  to  £25  per  acre ; 
the  yearly  cost  of  manure,  which  is  the  chief  expense, 
attains  from  £8  to  £16  per  acre  the  first  year,  and  then 
from  £5  to  £8  every  year.”  The  gardens  are  of  the 
average  size  of  two  and  a  half  acres,  and  in  each 
garden  from  200  to  400  frames  are  used.  About  the 
Belgian  market-gardeners  the  same  remark  must 
be  made  as  has  been  made  concerning  the  French 
maraichers.  They  work  awfully  hard,  having  to  pay 
extravagant  rents,  and  to  lay  money  aside,  with  the 
hope  of  some  day  being  able  to  buy  a  piece  of  land, 
and  to  get  rid  of  the  blood-sucker  who  absorbs  so 
much  of  their  money  returns  ;  having  moreover  every 
year  to  buy  more  and  more  frames  in  order  to  obtain 
their  produce  earlier  and  earlier,  so  as  to  fetch 


APPENDIX.  435 

higher  prices  for  it,  they  work  like  slaves.  But  it 
must  be  remembered  that  in  order  to  obtain  the  same 
amount  of  produce  under  glass,  in  greenhouses,  the 
work  of  three  men  only ,  working  fifty-five  hours  a  week, 
is  required  in  Jersey  for  cultivating  one  acre  of  land 
under  glass. 

But  I  must  refer  my  readers  to  the  excellent  work 
of  my  friend,  B.  Seebohm  Rown  tree’s  Land  and  Labour  : 
Lessons  from  Belgium,  London  (Macmillan),  1910,  a 
strong  volume  of  more  than  600  pages,  which  is  the 
result  of  several  years  of  laborious  studies.  It  is  full 
of  figures  and  personal  observations,  and  will  be  con¬ 
sulted  with  advantage  for  all  the  questions  dealing 
with  the  economical  life  of  Belgium. 


L.— THE  CHANNEL  ISLANDS— THE  SCILLY 

ISLANDS. 

The  excellent  state  of  agriculture  in  Jersey  and 
Guernsey  has  often  been  mentioned  in  the  agricultural 
and  general  literature  of  this  country,  so  I  need  only 
refer  to  the  works  of  Mr.  W.  E.  Bear  {Journal  of  the 
Agricultural  Society ,  1888  ;  Quarterly  Review,  1888  ; 
British  Farmer,  etc.)  and  to  the  exhaustive  work  of 
D.  H.  Ansted  and  R.  G.  Latham,  The  Channel  Islands, 
third  edition,  revised  by  E.  Toulmin  Nicolle,  London 
(Allen),  1893. 

Many  English  writers — certainly  not  those  just 
named — are  inclined  to  explain  the  successes  obtained 
in  Jersey  by  the  wonderful  climate  of  the  islands  and 
the  fertility  of  the  soil.  As  to  climate,  it  is  certainly 
true  that  the  yearly  record  of  sunshine  in  Jersey  is 
greater  than  in  any  English  station.  It  reaches  from 
1,842  hours  a  year  (1890)  to  2,300  (1893),  and  thus 


436  APPENDIX. 

exceeds  the  highest  aggregate  sunshine  recorded  in 
any  English  station  by  from  168  to  336  hours  (ex¬ 
clusively  high  maximum  in  1894)  a  year ;  May  and 
August  seeming  to  be  the  best  favoured  months.* 
But,  to  quote  from  the  just  mentioned  work  of  Ansted 
and  Latham  : — 

“  There  is,  doubtless,  in  all  the  islands,  and  espe¬ 
cially  in  Guernsey,  an  absence  of  sun  heat  and  of  the 
direct  action  of  the  sun’s  rays  in  summer ,  which  must 
have  its  effect,  and  a  remarkable  'prevalence  of  cold ,  dry , 
east  wind  in  late  spring ,  retarding  vegetation  ”  (p.  407). 
Everyone  who  has  spent,  be  it  only  two  or  three 
weeks  in  late  spring  in  Jersey,  must  know  by  ex¬ 
perience  how  true  this  remark  is.  Moreover,  there  are 
the  well-known  Guernsey  fogs,  and  “  owing  also  to 
rain  and  damp  the  trees  suffer  from  mildew  and 
blight,  as  well  as  from  various  aphides.”  The  same 
authors  remark  that  the  nectarine  does  not  succeed 
in  Jersey  in  the  open  air  “  owing  to  the  absence  of 
autumn  heat  ”  ;  that  “  the  wet  autumns  and  cold 
summers  do  not  agree  with  the  apricot ;  ”  and  so  on. 

If  Jersey  potatoes  are,  on  the  average,  three  weeks 
in  advance  of  those  grown  in  Cornwall,  the  fact  is  fully 
explained  by  the  continual  improvements  made  in 
Jersey  in  view  of  obtaining,  be  it  ever  so  small,  quan¬ 
tities  of  potatoes  a  few  days  in  advance,  either  by 
special  care  taken  to  plant  them  out  as  soon  as  pos¬ 
sible,  protecting  them  from  the  cold  winds,  or  by 
choosing  tiny  pieces  of  land  naturally  protected  or 
better  exposed.  The  difference  in  price  between  the 
earliest  and  the  later  potatoes  being  immense,  the 
greatest  efforts  are  made  to  obtain  an  early  crop. 

The  decline  of  prices  per  ton  is  best  seen  from  the 
following  prices  in  1910  : — 

*  Ten  Years  of  Sunshine  in  the  British  Isles ,  1881-1890. 


APPENDIX. 

437 

Week  ending 

Quantities 

exported. 

Prices. 

Tons. 

£ 

s. 

d. 

April 

2-30 

.  210 

30 

11 

0 

May 

7  .  . 

.  600 

18 

12 

8 

99 

14  .  . 

15 

12 

0 

99 

21  .  . 

. 2,000 

13 

0 

0 

99 

28  .  . 

10 

3 

8 

June 

4  .  . 

. 7,825 

8 

13 

4 

99 

11  .  . 

. 9,200 

6 

5 

8 

99 

18  .  . 

4 

17 

6 

99 

25  .  . 

. 9,650 

4 

8 

10 

July 

2  .  . 

3 

13 

8 

99 

9  .  . 

2 

18 

6 

99 

16  .  . 

3 

9 

4 

99 

23  .  . 

.  10 

3 

18 

0 

Total  . 

.  57,890 

£381,373 

The  quantities  of  early  potatoes  exported  varied 
during  the  years  1901  to  1910  from  47,530  tons  to 
77,800  tons,  and  their  value  from  £233,289  to  £475,889. 

As  to  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  it  is  still  worse  advo¬ 
cacy,  because  there  is  no  area  in  the  United  Kingdom 
of  equal  size  which  would  be  manured  to  such  an 
extent  as  the  area  of  Jersey  and  Guernsey  is  by  means 
of  artificial  manure.  In  the  seventeenth  century,  as 
may  be  seen  from  the  first  edition  of  Falle’s  Jersey , 
published  in  1694,  the  island  “  did  not  produce  that 
quantity  as  is  necessary  for  the  use  of  the  inhabitants, 
who  must  be  supplied  from  England  in  time  of  peace, 
or  from  Dantzic  in  Poland.”  In  The  Groans  of  the 
Inhabitants  of  Jersey ,  published  in  London  in  1709, 
we  find  the  same  complaint.  And  Quayle,  who  wrote 
in  1812  and  quoted  the  two  works  just  mentioned, 
in  his  turn  complained  in  these  terms  :  “  The  quan¬ 
tity  at  this  day  raised  is  quite  inadequate  to  their 
sustenance,  apart  from  the  garrison  ”  ( General  View 
of  the  Agriculture  and  the  Present  State  of  the  Islands 


438 


APPENDIX. 

on  the  Coast  of  Normandy ,  London,  1815,  p.  77.)  And 
he  added  :  “  After  making  all  allowance,  the  truth 
must  be  told  ;  the  grain  crops  are  here  foul,  in  some 
instances  execrably  so.”  And  when  we  consult  the 
modern  writers,  Ansted,  Latham,  and  Nicolle,  we 
learn  that  the  soil  is  by  no  means  rich.  It  is  decom¬ 
posed  granite,  and  easily  cultivable,  but  “  it  contains 
no  organic  matter  besides  what  man  has  put  into  it.” 

This  is  certainly  the  opinion  anyone  will  come  to 
if  he  only  visits  thoroughly  the  island  and  looks  atten¬ 
tively  to  its  soil — to  say  nothing  of  the  Quenvais 
where,  in  Quayle’s  time,  there  was  “  an  Arabian  desert  ” 
of  sands  and  hillocks  covering  about  seventy  acres 
(p.  24),  with  a  little  better  but  still  very  poor  soil  in 
the  north  and  west  of  it.  The  fertility  of  the  soil 
has  entirely  been  made,  first,  by  the  vraic  (sea-weeds), 
upon  which  the  inhabitants  have  maintained  com¬ 
munal  rights  ;  later  on,  by  considerable  shipments  of 
manure,  in  addition  to  the  manure  of  the  very  con¬ 
siderable  living  stock  which  is  kept  in  the  island  ;  and 
finally,  by  an  admirably  good  cultivation  of  the  soil. 

Much  more  than  sunshine  and  good  soil,  it  was  the 
conditions  of  land-tenure  and  the  low  taxation  which 
contributed  to  the  remarkable  development  of  agri¬ 
culture  in  Jersey.  First  of  all,  the  people  of  the  Isles 
know  but  little  of  the  tax-collector.  While  the  English 
pay,  in  taxes,  an  average  of  50s.  per  head  of  population  ; 
while  the  French  peasant  is  over-burdened  with  taxes 
of  all  imaginable  descriptions;  and  the  Milanese  peasant 
has  to  give  to  the  Treasury  full  30  per  cent,  of  his  income 
— all  taxes  paid  in  the  Channel  Islands  amount  to  but 
10s.  per  head  in  the  town  parishes  and  to  much  less  than 
that  in  the  country  parishes.  Besides,  of  indirect  taxes, 
none  are  known  but  the  2s.  6d.  paid  for  each  gallon  of 
imported  spirits  and  9d.  per  gallon  of  imported  wine. 


439 


APPENDIX. 

As  to  the  conditions  of  land-tenure,  the  inhabitants 
have  happily  escaped  the  action  of  Roman  Law,  and 
they  continue  to  live  under  the  coutumier  de  Normandie 
(the  old  Norman  common  law).  Accordingly,  more 
than  one-half  of  the  territory  is  owned  by  those  who 
themselves  till  the  soil ;  there  is  no  landlord  to  watch 
the  crops  and  to  raise  the  rent  before  the  farmer  has 
ripened  the  fruit  of  his  improvements  ;  there  is  nobody 
to  charge  so  much  for  each  cart-load  of  sea-weeds  or 
sand  taken  to  the  fields  ;  everyone  takes  the  amount 
he  likes,  provided  he  cuts  the  weeds  at  a  certain 
season  of  the  year,  and  digs  out  the  sand  at  a  distance 
of  sixty  yards  from  the  high-water  mark.  Those  who 
buy  land  for  cultivation  can  do  so  without  becoming 
enslaved  to  the  money-lender.  One-fourth  part  only 
of  the  permanent  rent  which  the  purchaser  undertakes 
to  pay  is  capitalised  and  has  to  be  paid  down  on  pur¬ 
chase  (often  less  than  that),  the  remainder  being  a 
perpetual  rent  in  wheat  which  is  valued  in  Jersey  at 
fifty  to  fifty-four  sous  de  France  per  cabot.  To  seize 
property  for  debt  is  accompanied  with  such  difficulties 
that  it  is  seldom  resorted  to  (Quayle’s  General  View, 
pp.  41-46).  Conveyances  of  land  are  simply  acknow¬ 
ledged  by  both  parties  on  oath,  and  cost  nearly  nothing. 
And  the  laws  of  inheritance  are  such  as  to  preserve 
the  homestead,  notwithstanding  the  debts  that  the 
father  may  have  run  into  (ibid.,  pp.  35-41). 

After  having  shown  how  small  are  the  farms  in  the 
islands  (from  twenty  to  five  acres,  and  very  many  less 
than  that) — there  being  “  less  than  100  farms  in  either 
island  that  exceed  twenty-five  acres  ;  and  of  these 
only  about  half  a  dozen  in  Jersey  exceed  fifty  acres  ” — 
Messrs.  Ansted,  Latham,  and  Nicolle  remark  : — 

“  In  no  place  do  we  find  so  happy  and  so  contented 
a  country  as  in  the  Channel  Islands.  ...”  “  The 


440 


APPENDIX. 


system  of  land-tenure  has  also  contributed  in  no  small 
degree  to  their  prosperity.  .  .  .”  “  The  purchaser 

becomes  the  absolute  owner  of  the  property,  and  his 
position  cannot  be  touched  so  long  as  the  interest  of 
these  [wheat]  rents  be  paid.  He  cannot  be  compelled, 
as  in  the  case  of  mortgage,  to  refund  the  principal.  The 
advantages  of  such  a  system  are  too  patent  to  need  any 
further  allusion .”  ( The  Channel  Islands ,  third  edition, 
revised  by  E.  Toulmin  Nieolle,  p.  401 ;  see  also  p.  443.) 

The  following  will  better  show  how  the  cultivable 
area  is  utilised  in  Jersey  ( The  Evening  Post  Royal 
Almanack )  : — 

1894.  1911. 

Acres.  Acres. 


Corn  crops 


Green  crops 


Clover,  sainfoin  and 
grasses  under  rota 
tion  .... 

Permanent  pasture  /For  hay 
or  grass 


{Wheat  .  . 

Barley  and  here  . 
Oats  and  rye  . 
Beans  and  peas  . 
f  Potatoes  . 

J  Turnips  and  swedes 
1  Mangolds  . 

[Other  green  crops 


For  hay  . 
Not  for  hay 


Fruit 


\Not  for  hay  . 

Bare  fallow  . 

[Small  fruit 
1  Orchards  and  small 

[  fruit . 

Other  crops  . 


1,709 

113 

499 

16 

7,007 

111 

232 

447 


2,842 

2,208 

1,117 

3,057 


656 

125 

1,213 

34 

8,911 

61 

137 

176 

2,720 

1,731 

944 

2,522 

53 

99 

1,151 

240 


Living  Stock. 

Horses  used  solely  for  agriculture 
Unbroken  horses  ...... 

Mares  solely  for  breeding  .  .  .  . 


21,252 

20,733 

1894. 

1911. 

2,252 

2,188 

83 

69 

16 

— 

Horses 


2,351  2,257 


APPENDIX. 


441 


Living  Stock.  1894.  1911. 

Cows  and  heifers  in  milk  or  in  calf  .  6,709  6,710 

Other  cattle  : — 

Two  years  or  more .  864  \ 

One  year  to  two  years  ....  2,252  V  5,321 

Less  than  one  year .  2,549  J 


Total  cattle  ....  12,374  12,031 

Sheep,  all  ages .  332  186 

Pigs,  including  sows  for  breeding  .  .  6,021  4,639 

Exports. 

1887.  1888.  1889. 

Bulls .  102  100  92 

Cows  and  heifers .  1,395  1,639  1,629 

Potatoes  exported : — 

Average.  Tons.  £ 

1887-1890  ........  54,502  308,713 

1891-1894  62,885  413,609 

1901-1905  66,731  455,773 

1906  .  51,932  308,229 

1907  .  77,800  377,259 

1908  .  53,100  356,305 

1909  .  62,690  332,404 

1910  .  57,890  381,373 


The  export  value  per  acre  varied  in  different  years 
from  £27,  6s.  in  1893  to  £66,  Is.  in  1894,  and  even 
£95,  18s.  in  1904. 

As  regards  greenhouse  culture,  a  friend  of  mine,  who 
has  worked  as  a  gardener  in  Jersey,  has  collected  for 
me  various  information  relative  to  the  productivity 
of  culture  under  glass.  Out  of  it  the  following  may 
be  taken  as  a  perfectly  reliable  illustration,  in  addition 
to  those  given  in  the  text : — 

Mr.  B.’s  greenhouse  has  a  length  of  300  feet  and  a 
width  of  18  feet,  which  makes  5,400  square  feet,  out  of 
which  900  square  feet  are  under  the  passage  in  the 


442 


APPENDIX. 

middle.  The  cultivable  area  is  thus  4,500  square  feet. 
There  are  no  brick  walls,  but  brick  pillars  and  boards 
are  used  for  front  walls.  Hot-water  heating  is  pro¬ 
vided,  but  is  only  used  occasionally,  to  keep  off  the 
frosts  in  winter — the  crops  being  early  potatoes  (which 
require  no  heating),  followed  by  tomatoes.  The  latter 
are  Mr.  B.’s  speciality.  Catch  crops  of  radishes,  etc., 
are  taken.  The  cost  of  the  greenhouse,  without  the  heat¬ 
ing  apparatus,  is  10s.  per  running  foot  of  greenhouse, 
which  makes  £150  for  one-eighth  of  an  acre  under  glass, 
or  a  little  less  than  7d.  per  glass-roofed  square  foot. 

The  crops  are  :  potatoes,  four  cabots  per  perch — 
that  is,  three-quarters  of  a  ton  of  early  potatoes  from 
the  greenhouse ;  and  tomatoes,  in  the  culture  of 
which  Mr.  B.  attains  extraordinary  results.  He  puts 
in  only  1,000  plants,  thus  giving  to  his  plants  more 
room  than  is  usually  given  ;  and  he  cultivates  a  corru¬ 
gated  variety  which  gives  very  heavy  crops  but  does 
not  fetch  the  same  prices  as  the  smooth  varieties. 
In  1896  his  crop  was  four  tons  of  tomatoes,  and  so  it 
would  have  been  in  1897 — each  plant  giving  an  average 
of  twenty  pounds  of  fruit,  while  the  usual  crop  is  from 
eight  to  twelve  pounds  per  plant. 

The  total  crop  was  thus  four  and  three-quarter  tons 
of  vegetables,  to  which  the  catch  crops  must  be  added 
— thus  corresponding  to  85,000  lb.  per  acre  (over 
90,000  lb.  with  the  catch  crops).  I  again  omit  the 
money  returns,  and  only  mention  that  the  expendi¬ 
ture  for  fuel  and  manure  was  about  £10  a  year,  and 
that  the  Jersey  average  is  three  men,  each  working 
fifty-five  hours  a  week  (ten  hours  a  day),  for  every  acre 
under  glass. 

The  Stilly  Islands. — These  islands  also  give  a  beauti¬ 
ful  illustration  of  what  may  be  obtained  from  the 
soil  by  an  intensive  cultivation.  When  shipping  and 


443 


APPENDIX. 

supplying  pilots  became  a  decaying  source  of  income, 
the  Scillonians  took  to  the  growing  of  potatoes.  For 
many  years,  we  are  told  by  Mr.  J.  G.  Uren  (Stilly  and 
the  Scillonians ,  Plymouth,  1907),  this  was  a  very 
profitable  industry.  The  crop  was  ready  at  least  a 
month  in  advance  of  any  other  source  of  supply  on 
the  mainland.  Every  year  about  1,000  tons  of  potatoes 
were  exported.  “  In  its  palmy  days  the  potato  harvest 
in  Scilly  was  the  great  event  of  the  year.  Gangs  of 
diggers  were  brought  across  from  the  mainland,”  and 
the  prices  went  occasionally  up  to  £28  a  ton  for  the 
earliest  potatoes.  Gradually,  however,  the  export  of 
potatoes  was  reduced  to  less  than  one-half  of  what  it 
was  formerly.  Then  the  inhabitants  of  the  islands 
went  for  fishing,  and  later  on  they  began  to  grow 
flowers.  Frost  and  snow  being  practically  unknown  in 
the  islands,  this  new  industry  succeeded  very  well.  The 
arable  area  of  the  islands  is  about  4,000  acres,  which 
are  divided  into  small  farms,  less  than  from  fifteen 
to  twenty  acres,  and  these  farms  are  transmitted, 
according  to  the  local  custom,  from  father  to  son. 

It  is  not  long  ago  that  they  began  to  grow  wild  nar¬ 
cissuses,  to  which  they  soon  added  daffodils  (a  hundred 
varieties),  and  lilies,  especially  arum-lilies,  for  Church 
decoration.  All  these  are  grown  in  narrow  strips, 
sheltered  from  the  winds  by  dwarf  hedges.  Movable 
glass-houses  are  resorted  to  shelter  the  flowers  for  a 
certain  time,  and  in  this  way  the  gardeners  have  a 
succession  of  crops,  beginning  soon  after  Christmas, 
and  lasting  until  April  or  May. 

The  flowers  are  shipped  to  Penzance,  and  thence 
carried  by  rail  in  special  carriages.  At  the  top  of  the 
season  thirty  to  forty  tons  are  shipped  in  a  single 
day.  The  total  exports,  which  were  only  100  tons  in 
1887,  have  now  reached  1,000  in  1907.  / 


444 


APPENDIX. 


M.— IRRIGATED  MEADOWS  IN  ITALY. 

In  the  Journal  de  V Agriculture  (2nd  Feb.,  1889)  the 
following  was  said  about  the  marcites  of  Milan  : — 

“  On  part  of  these  meadows  water  runs  constantly, 
on  others  it  is  left  running  for  ten  hours  every  week. 
The  former  give  six  crops  every  year  ;  since  February, 
eighty  to  100  tons  of  grass,  equivalent  to  twenty  and 
twenty-five  tons  of  dry  hay,  being  obtained  from  the 
hectare  (eight  to  ten  tons  per  acre).  Lower  down, 
thirteen  tons  of  dry  hay  per  acre  is  the  regular  crop. 
Taking  eighty  acres  placed  in  average  conditions,  they 
will  yield  fifty-six  tons  of  green  grass  per  hectare — that 
is,  fourteen  tons  of  dry  hay,  or  the  food  of  three  milch 
cows  to  the  hectare  (two  and  a  half  acres).  The  rent 
of  such  meadows  is  from  £8  to  £9,  12s.  per  acre.” 

For  Indian  corn,  the  advantages  of  irrigation  are 
equally  apparent.  On  irrigated  lands,  crops  of  from 
seventy-eight  to  eighty-nine  bushels  per  acre  are  ob¬ 
tained,  as  against  from  fifty-six  to  sixty-seven  bushels 
on  unirrigated  lands,  also  in  Italy,  and  twenty-eight 
to  thirty-three  bushels  in  France  (Garola,  Les  Cereales). 


N.— PLANTED  WHEAT. 

The  Rothamsted  Challenge. 

Sir  A.  Cotton  delivered,  in  1893,  before  the  Balloon 
Society,  a  lecture  on  agriculture,  in  which  lecture  he 
warmly  advocated  deep  cultivation  and  planting  the 
seeds  of  wheat  wide  apart.  He  published  it  later  on 
as  a  pamphlet  (Lecture  on  Agriculture ,  2nd  edition, 
with  Appendix.  Dorking,  1893).  He  obtained,  for  the 


445 


APPENDIX. 

best  of  his  sort  of  wheat,  an  average  of  “  fifty-five  ears 
per  plant,  with  three  oz.  of  grain  of  fair  quality — 
perhaps  sixty-three  lbs.  per  bushel  ”  (p.  10).  This 
corresponded  to  ninety  bushels  per  acre — that  is,  his 
result  was  very  similar  to  those  obtained  at  the  Tom- 
blaine  and  Capelle  agricultural  stations  by  Grandeau 
and  F.  Desspr&z,  whose  work  seems  not  to  have  been 
known  to  Sir  A.  Cotton.  True,  Sir  A.  Cotton’s  ex¬ 
periments  were  not  conducted,  or  rather  were  not 
reported,  in  a  thoroughly  scientific  way.  But  the 
more  desirable  it  would  have  been,  either  to  contradict 
or  to  confirm  his  statements  by  experiments  carefully 
conducted  at  some  experimental  agricultural  station. 
Unfortunately,  so  far  as  I  know,  no  such  experiments 
have  yet  been  made,  and  the  possibility  of  profitably 
increasing  the  wheat  crop  by  the  means  indicated  by 
Sir  A.  Cotton  has  still  to  be  tested  in  a  scientific 
spirit. 


0.— REPLANTED  WHEAT. 

A  few  words  on  this  method  which  now  claims  the 
attention  of  the  experimental  stations  may  perhaps 
not  be  useless. 

In  Japan,  rice  is  always  treated  in  this  way.  It  is 
treated  as  our  gardeners  treat  lettuce  and  cabbage — 
that  is,  it  is  let  first  to  germinate  ;  then  it  is  sown  in 
special  warm  corners,  well  inundated  with  water  and 
protected  from  the  birds  by  strings  drawn  over  the 
ground.  Thirty-five  to  fifty-five  days  later,  the  young 
plants,  now  fully  developed  and  possessed  of  a  thick 
network  of  rootlets,  are  replanted  in  the  open  ground. 
In  this  way  the  Japanese  obtain  from  twenty  to  thirty- 
two  bushels  of  dressed  rice  to  the  acre  in  the  poor 
provinces,  forty  bushels  in  the  better  ones,  and  from 


446  APPENDIX. 

sixty  to  sixty-seven  bushels  on  the  best  lands.  The 
average,  in  six  rice  growing  states  of  North  America, 
is  at  the  same  time  only  nine  and  a  half  bushels.* 

In  China,  replanting  is  also  in  general  use,  and  con¬ 
sequently  the  idea  has  been  circulated  in  France  by 
M.  Eugene  Simon  and  the  late  M.  Toubeau,  that 
replanted  wheat  could  be  made  a  powerful  means  of 
increasing  the  crops  in  Western  Europe,  f  So  far  as 
I  know,  the  idea  has  not  yet  been  submitted  to  a 
practical  test ;  but  when  one  thinks  of  the  remarkable 
results  obtained  by  Hallet’s  method  of  planting ;  of 
what  the  market-gardeners  obtain  by  replanting  once 
and  even  twice ;  and  of  how  rapidly  the  work  of 
planting  is  done  by  market-gardeners  in  Jersey,  one 
must  agree  that  in  replanted  wheat  we  have  a  new 
opening  worthy  of  the  most  careful  consideration. 
Experiments  have  not  yet  been  made  in  this  direction  ; 
but  Prof.  Grandeau,  whose  opinion  I  have  asked  on 
this  subject,  wrote  to  me  that  he  believes  the  method 
must  have  a  great  future.  Practical  market-gardeners 
(Paris  maraicJier )  whose  opinion  I  have  asked,  see,  of 
course,  nothing  extravagant  in  that  idea. 

With  plants  yielding  1,000  grains  each — and  in  the 
Capelle  experiment  they  yielded  an  average  of  600 
grains — the  yearly  wheat-food  of  one  individual  man 
(5*65  bushels,  or  265  lbs.),  which  is  represented  by  from 
5,000,000  to  5,500,000  grains,  could  be  grown  on  a 

*  Dr.  M.  Fesca,  Beitrdge  zur  Kenntniss  der  Japanesischen 
Lcindwirthschaft,  Part  ii.,  p.  33  (Berlin,  1893).  The  economy 
in  seeds  is  also  considerable.  While  in  Italy  250  kilogrammes 
to  the  hectare  are  sown,  and  160  kilogrammes  in  South  Carolina, 
the  Japanese  use  only  sixty  kilogrammes  for  the  same  area. 
(Semler,  Tropische  Agrikullur ,  Bd.  iii.,  pp.  20-28.) 

f  Eugene  Simon,  La  cite  chinoise  (translated  into  English)  ; 
Toubeau,  La  repartition  m6trique  des  impots ,  2  vols.,  Paris 
(Guillaumin),  1880. 


APPENDIX.  447 

space  of  250  square  yards  ;  while  for  an  experienced 
hand  replanting  would  represent  no  more  than  ten  to 
twelve  hours’  work.  With  a  proper  machine-tool, 
the  work  could  probably  be  very  much  reduced.  In 
Japan,  two  men  and  two  women  plant  with  rice 
three-quarters  of  an  acre  in  one  day  (Ronna,  Les 
Irrigations ,  vol.  iii.,  1890,  p.  67  seq.).  That  means 
(Fesca,  J apanesische  Landwirthschaft ,  p.  33)  from 
33,000  to  66,000  plants,  or,  let  us  say,  a  minimum  of 
8,250  plants  a  day  for  one  person.  The  Jersey  gar¬ 
deners  plant  from  600  (inexperienced)  to  1,000  plants 
per  hour  (experienced). 


P.— IMPORTS  OF  VEGETABLES  TO  THE 
UNITED  KINGDOM. 

That  the  land  in  this  country  is  not  sufficiently  utilised 
for  market-gardening,  and  that  the  largest  portion  of 
the  vegetables  which  are  imported  from  abroad  could 
be  grown  in  this  country,  has  been  said  over  and  over 
again  within  the  last  twenty-five  years. 

It  is  certain  that  considerable  improvements  have 
taken  place  lately — the  area  under  market-gardens, 
and  especially  the  area  under  glass  for  the  growth  of 
fruit  and  vegetables,  having  largely  been  increased  of 
late.  Thus,  instead  of  38,957  acres,  which  were  given 
to  market-gardening  in  Great  Britain  in  1875,  there 
were,  in  1894,  88,210  acres,  exclusive  of  vegetable 
crops  on  farms,  given  to  that  purpose  {The  Gardener's 
Chronicle ,  20th  April,  1895,  p.  483).  But  that  increase 
remains  a  trifle  in  comparison  with  similar  increases 
in  France,  Belgium,  and  the  United  States.  In 
France,  the  area  given  to  market-gardening  was  esti¬ 
mated  in  1892  by  M.  Baltet  {V horticulture  dans  les 


448 


APPENDIX. 

cinq  'parties  du  monde,  Paris,  Hachette,  1895)  at 
1,075,000  acres — four  times  more,  in  proportion  to 
the  cultivable  area,  than  in  this  country ;  and  the 
most  remarkable  of  it  is  that  considerable  tracts  of 
land  formerly  treated  as  uncultivable  have  been  re¬ 
claimed  for  the  purposes  of  market-gardening  as  also 
of  fruit  growing. 

As  things  stand  now  in  this  country,  we  see  that  very 
large  quantities  of  the  commonest  vegetables,  each  of 
which  could  be  grown  in  this  country,  are  imported. 

Lettuces  are  imported — not  only  from  the  Azores  or 
from  the  south  of  France,  but  they  continue  until 
June  to  be  imported  from  France,  where  they  are 
mostly  grown — not  in  the  open  air,  but  in  frames. 
Early  cucumbers,  also  grown  in  frames,  are  largely 
imported  from  Holland,  and  are  sold  so  cheaply  that 
many  English  gardeners  have  ceased  to  grow  them.* 
Even  beetroot  and  pickling  cabbage  are  imported 
from  Holland  and  Brittany  (the  neighbourhoods  of 
Saint  Malo,  where  I  saw  them  grown  in  a  sandy  soil, 
which  would  grow  nothing  without  a  heavy  manuring 
with  guano,  as  a  second  crop,  after  a  first  one  of  pota¬ 
toes)  ;  and  while  onions  were  formerly  largely  grown 
in  this  country,  we  see  that,  in  1894,  5,288,512  bushels 
of  onions,  £765,049  worth,  were  imported  from  Belgium 
(chief  exporter),  Germany,  Holland,  France,  and  so  on. 

Again,  that  early  potatoes  should  be  imported  from 
the  Azores  and  the  south  of  France  is  quite  natural. 
It  is  not  so  natural,  however,  that  more  than  50,000 
tons  of  potatoes  (58,060  tons,  £521,141  worth,  on  the 
average  during  the  years  1891-1894)  should  be  im¬ 
ported  from  the  Channel  Islands,  because  there  are 

*  The  Gardener's  Chronicle,  20th  April,  1895,  p.  483.  The 
same,  I  learn  from  a  German  grower  near  Berlin,  takes  place 
in  Germany. 


APPENDIX.  449 

hundreds  if  not  thousands  of  acres  in  South  Devon, 
and  most  probably  in  other  parts  of  the  south  coast 
too,  where  early  potatoes  could  be  grown  equally  well. 
But  besides  the  90,000  tons  of  early  potatoes  (over 
£700,000  worth)  which  are  imported  to  this  country, 
enormous  quantities  of  late  potatoes  are  imported 
from  Holland,  Germany,  and  Belgium  ;  so  that  the 
total  imports  of  potatoes  reach  from  200,000  to  450,000 
tons  every  year.  Moreover,  this  country  imports  every 
year  all  sorts  of  green  vegetables,  for  the  sum  of  at 
least  £4,000,000,  and  for  £5,000,000  all  sorts  of  fruit 
(apart  from  exotic  fruit)  ;  while  thousands  of  acres  lie 
idle,  and  the  country  population  is  driven  to  the 
cities  in  search  of  work,  without  finding  it. 


Q.— FRUIT-CULTUEE  IN  BELGIUM. 

It  appears  from  the  Annuaire  statistique  de  la  belgique 
that,  out  of  a  cultivated  area  of  6,442,500  acres,  the 
following  areas  were  given  in  Belgium,  at  the  time 
of  the  last  census,  to  fruit-growing,  market-gardening, 
and  culture  under  glass :  Orchards,  117,600  acres ; 
market-gardens,  103,460  acres ;  vineries,  173  acres 
(increased  since)  ;  growing  of  trees  for  afforestation, 
gardens,  and  orchards,  7,475  acres  ;  potatoes,  456,000 
acres.  Consequently,  Belgium  is  able  to  export  every 
year  about  £250,000  worth  more  vegetables,  and  nearly 
£500,000  worth  more  fruit,  than  she  imports.  As  to  the 
vineries,  the  land  of  the  communes  of  Hoeylart  and 
Overyssche  near  Brussels  is  almost  entirely  covered  with 
glass,  and  the  exports  of  home-grown  grapes  attained, 
in  1910,  6,800  tons,  in  addition  to  34,000  tons  of  other 
home-grown  fruit.  Besides,  nearly  3,000  acres  in  the 
environs  of  Ghent  are  covered  with  horticultural  estab- 

15 


450  APPENDIX. 

lishments  which  export  palms,  azaleas,  rhododendrons, 
and  laurels  all  over  the  world,  including  Italy  and  the 
Argentine. 


R.— CULTURE  UNDER  GLASS  IN  HOLLAND. 

Holland  in  its  turn  has  introduced  gardening  in 
hothouses  on  a  great  scale.  Here  is  a  letter  which  I 
received  in  the  summer  of  1909  from  a  friend  : — 

“  Here  is  a  picture-postcard  which  J.  (a  professor 
of  botany  in  Belgium)  has  brought  from  Holland,  and 
which  he  asks  me  to  send  you.  [The  postcard  repre¬ 
sents  an  immense  space  covered  with  frames  and 
glass  lights.]  Similar  establishments  cover  many 
square  kilometres  between  Rotterdam  and  the  sea, 
in  the  north  of  Heuve.  At  the  time  when  J.  was 
there  (June  10)  they  had  cucumbers,  quite  ripe,  and 
melons  as  big  as  a  head  in  considerable  numbers, 
exported  abroad.  The  cultures  are  made  to  a  great 
extent  without  heating.  The  gardeners  sow  also 
radishes,  carrots,  lettuce,  under  the  same  glass.  The 
different  produce  comes  one  after  the  other.  They  also 
cultivate  large  quantities  of  strawberries  in  frames. 

“  The  glass-frames  are  transported  at  will,  so  as  to 
keep  under  glass  for  several  days  or  weeks  the  plants 
sown  in  any  part  of  the  garden.  J.  is  full  of  admira¬ 
tion  for  the  knowledge  of  the  gardeners.  Instead  of 
the  usual  routine,  they  apply  the  last  progress  of 
science.  He  was  told  that  glass  is  broken  very  seldom  ; 
they  have  acquired  the  art  of  handling  glass-frames 
with  facility  and  great  skill. 

“  Besides  the  frames  represented  on  the  photograph, 
the  region  between  Rotterdam  and  the  sea,  which 
is  named  Westland,  has  also  countless  glass-houses, 


APPENDIX.  451 

where  they  cultivate,  with  or  without  heating,  grapes, 
peaches,  northern  cherries,  haricot  beans,  tomatoes, 
and  other  fruit  and  vegetables.  These  cultures  have 
reached  a  very  high  degree  of  perfection.  The  gar¬ 
deners  take  the  greatest  care  to  fight  various  plant 
diseases.  They  also  cultivate  ordinary  fruit — apples, 
pears,  gooseberries,  strawberries,  and  so  on — and 
vegetables  in  the  open  air.  Westland  being  very 
much  exposed  to  strong  winds,  they  have  built 
numerous  walls,  which  break  the  wind,  and  serve  at 
the  same  time  for  the  culture  of  fruit  upon  the  walls. 

“  All  the  region  feels  the  favourable  influence  of  the 
agricultural  school  of  Naaldwijk,  which  is  situated 
almost  in  the  centre  of  the  Westland.” 


S.— PRICES  OBTAINED  IN  LONDON  FOR  DES¬ 
SERT  GRAPES  CULTIVATED  UNDER  GLASS. 

The  Fruit  and  Market-Gardener  gives  every  week  the 
prices  realised  by  horticultural  and  intensive  garden¬ 
ing  produce,  as  well  as  by  flowers,  at  the  great  market 
of  Covent  Garden.  The  prices  obtained  for  dessert 
grapes — Colmar  and  Hamburg — are  very  instructive. 
I  took  two  years — 1907-1908 — which  differ  from 
ordinary  years  by  the  winters  having  been  foggy, 
which  made  the  garden  produce  to  be  somewhat  late. 

In  the  first  days  of  January  the  Colmar  grapes 
arriving  from  the  Belgian  hothouses  were  still  sold 
at  relatively  low  prices — from  6d.  to  lOd.  the  pound. 
But  the  prices  slowly  rose  in  January  and  February  ; 
the  Hamburg  grapes  were  late  that  year,  and  there¬ 
fore  in  the  middle  of  March  and  later  on  in  April 
the  Colmars  fetched  from  Is.  6d.  to  2s.  6d. 

The  English  grapes,  coming  from  Worthing  and  so 


452  APPENDIX. 

on,  are  certainly  preferred  to  those  that  come  from 
Belgium  or  the  Channel  Islands.  By  the  end  of  April, 
1907,  and  at  the  beginning  of  May,  they  were  even  sold 
at  2s.  and  4s.  the  pound.  The  best  and  largest  grapes 
for  the  dinners  are  evidently  fetching  fancy  prices. 

But  at  last  the  Hamburg  grapes,  which  were  late 
in  1907  and  1908,  began  to  arrive  from  Belgium,  the 
Channel  Islands,  and  England,  and  the  prices  suddenly 
fell.  By  the  end  of  May  the  Belgian  Hamburgs  fetched 
only  from  lOd.  to  Is.  4d.  the  pound,  and  the  prices  were 
still  falling.  In  June  and  July  the  gardeners  could  only 
get  from  5d.  to  7d.,  and  during  the  months  of  Septem¬ 
ber,  October,  and  November,  1908,  the  best  Guernsey 
grapes  were  quoted  at  6d.  the  pound.  Very  beautiful 
ones  fetched  only  4d.  the  pound. 

It  was  only  in  the  first  days  of  November  that  the 
prices  went  up  to  lOd.  and  Is.  Id.  But  already,  in  the 
second  half  of  December,  the  new  crop  of  Colmars 
began  to  pour  in  from  Belgium,  and  the  prices  fell  to 
9d.,  and  even  to  6d.  per  pound  about  Christmas. 

We  thus  see  that,  notwithstanding  a  great  demand 
for  the  best  hothouse  grapes,  with  big  grains  and 
quite  fresh  cut,  these  grapes  are  sold  in  the  autumn 
almost  at  the  same  prices  as  grapes  grown  under  the 
beautiful  sun  of  the  south. 

As  to  the  quantities  of  grapes  imported  to  this 
country,  the  figures  are  also  most  instructive.  The 
average  for  the  three  years  1905-1907  was  81,700,000 
lbs.,  representing  a  value  of  £2,224,500. 

T.— THE  USE  OE  ELECTRICITY  IN 
AGRICULTURE. 

In  the  first  editions  of  this  book  I  did  not  venture 
to  speak  about  the  improvements  that  could  be  ob- 


453 


APPENDIX. 

tained  in  agriculture  with  the  aid  of  electricity,  or  by 
watering  the  soil  with  cultures  of  certain  useful 
microbes.  I  preferred  to  mention  only  wTell-established 
facts  of  intensive  culture  ;  but  now  it  would  be  im¬ 
possible  not  to  mention  what  has  been  done  in  these 
two  directions. 

More  than  thirty  years  ago  I  mentioned  in  Nature 
the  increase  of  the  crops  obtained  by  a  Russian  land¬ 
lord  who  used  to  place  at  a  certain  height  above  his 
experimental  field  telegraph  wires,  through  which  an 
electric  current  was  passed.  A  few  years  ago,  in 
1908,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  gave  in  the  Daily  Chronicle  of 
July  15  the  results  of  similar  experiments  made  in  a 
farm  near  Evesham  by  Messrs.  Newman  and  Bomford, 
with  the  aid  of  Sir  Oliver  Lodge’s  son,  Mr.  Lionel  Lodge. 

A  series  of  thin  wires  was  placed  above  an  ex¬ 
perimental  field  at  distances  of  ten  yards  from  each 
other.  These  wires  were  attached  to  telegraph  poles, 
high  enough  not  to  stand  in  the  way  of  the  carts  loaded 
with  corn.  Another  field  was  cultivated  by  the  side 
of  the  former,  in  order  to  ascertain  what  would  be  the 
crops  obtained  without  the  aid  of  electricity. 

The  poles,  five  yards  high,  were  placed  far  away 
from  each  other,  so  that  the  wires  were  quite  loose. 
Owing  to  the  high  tension  of  the  currents  that  had  to 
be  passed  through  the  wires,  the  insulators  on  the  poles 
were  very  powerful.  The  currents  were  positive  and 
of  a  high  potential — about  100,000  volts.  The  escape 
of  electricity  under  these  conditions  was  so  great  that  it 
could  be  seen  in  the  dark.  One  could  also  feel  it  on 
the  hair  and  the  face  while  passing  under  the  wires. 

Nevertheless,  the  expenditure  of  electric  force  was 
small,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  writes  ;  because,  if  the  potential 
was  high,  the  quantity  of  consumed  energy  was,  not¬ 
withstanding  that,  very  small.  It  is  known,  indeed, 


454 


APPENDIX. 

that  this  is  also  the  case  with  the  discharges  of  atmos¬ 
pheric  electricity,  which  are  terrible  in  consequence 
of  their  high  tension,  but  do  not  represent  a  great  loss 
of  energy.  An  oil  motor  of  two  horse-power  was 
therefore  quite  sufficient. 

The  results  were  very  satisfactory.  The  wheat  crop 
in  the  electrified  field  was,  in  the  years  1906-1907,  by 
29  to  40  per  cent,  greater,  and  also  of  better  quality, 
than  in  the  non-electrified  field.  The  straw  was  also 
from  four  to  eight  inches  longer. 

For  strawberries  the  increase  of  the  crop  was  35  per 
cent.,  and  25  per  cent,  for  beetroot. 

As  to  the  inoculation  of  useful  microbes  by  means  of 
watering  the  soil  with  cultures  of  nitrifying  bacteria, 
experiments  on  a  great  scale  have  been  made  in  Prussia 
upon  some  peat-bogs.  The  German  agricultural  papers 
speak  of  these  experiments  as  having  given  most  satis¬ 
factory  results. 

Most  interesting  results  have  also  been  obtained  in 
Germany  by  heating  the  soil  with  a  mixture  of  air  and 
hot  steam  passed  along  the  ordinary  draining  tubes. 
A  society  has  been  formed  to  propagate  this  system, 
and  the  photographs  of  the  results  published  by  the 
Society  in  a  pamphlet,  GartenJcultur,  Bodenheizung , 
Klimaverbesserung  (Berlin,  1906),  seem  to  prove  that 
with  a  soil  thus  heated  the  growth  of  certain  vegetables 
is  accelerated  to  some  extent. 


U.— PETTY  TEADES  IN  THE  LYONS  EEGION. 

The  neighbourhoods  of  St.  Etienne  are  a  great 
centre  for  all  sorts  of  industries,  and  among  them  the 
petty  trades  occupy  still  an  important  place.  Iron¬ 
works  and  coal-mines  with  their  smoking  chimneys, 


455 


APPENDIX. 

noisy  factories,  roads  blackened  with  coal,  and  a  poor 
vegetation  give  the  country  the  well-known  aspects  of 
a  “  Black  Country.”  In  certain  towns,  such  as  St. 
Chamond,  one  finds  numbers  of  big  factories  in  which 
thousands  of  women  are  employed  in  the  fabrication 
of  'passementerie.  But  side  by  side  with  the  great 
industry  the  petty  trades  also  maintain  a  high  develop¬ 
ment.  Thus  we  have  first  the  fabrication  of  silk 
ribbons,  in  which  no  less  than  50,000  men  and  women 
were  employed  in  the  year  1885.  Only  3,000  or  4,000 
looms  were  located  then  in  the  factories  ;  while  the 
remainder — that  is,  from  1,200  to  1,400  looms — 
belonged  to  the  workers  themselves,  both  at  St. 
Etienne  and  in  the  surrounding  country.*  As  a  rule 
the  women  and  the  girls  spin  the  silk  or  make  the 
winding  off,  while  the  father  with  his  sons  weave  the 
ribbons.  I  saw  these  small  workshops  in  the  suburbs 
of  St.  Etienne,  where  complicated  ribbons  (with  inter¬ 
woven  addresses  of  the  manufacture),  as  well  as  ribbons 
of  high  artistic  finish,  were  woven  in  three  to  four 
looms,  while  in  the  next  room  the  wife  prepared  the 
dinner  and  attended  to  household  work. 

There  was  a  time  when  the  wages  were  high  in  the 
ribbon  trade  (reaching  over  ten  francs  a  day),  and 
M.  Euvert  wrote  me  that  half  of  the  suburban  houses 

*  I  am  indebted  for  the  following  information  to  M.  Y.  Euvert, 
President  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  of  St.  Etienne,  who 
sent  me,  while  I  was  in  the  Clairvaux  prison,  in  April,  1885,  a 
most  valuable  sketch  of  the  various  industries  of  the  region, 
in  reply  to  a  letter  of  mine,  and  I  avail  myself  of  the  opportunity 
for  expressing  to  M.  Euvert  my  best  thanks  for  his  courtesy. 
This  information  has  now  an  historical  value  only.  But  it  is 
such  an  interesting  page  of  the  history  of  the  small  industries 
that  I  retain  it  as  it  was  in  the  first  edition,  the  more  so  as  it  is 
most  interesting  to  compare  it  with  the  pages  given  in  the  text 
to  the  present  conditions  of  the  same  industries. 


456 


APPENDIX. 

of  St.  Etienne  had  been  built  by  the  passementiers 
themselves.  But  the  affairs  took  a  very  gloomy  aspect 
when  a  crisis  broke  out  in  1884.  No  orders  were 
forthcoming,  and  the  ribbon  weavers  had  to  live  on 
casual  earnings.  All  their  economies  were  soon  spent. 
“  How  many,”  M.  Euvert  wrote,  “  have  been  com¬ 
pelled  to  sell  for  a  few  hundred  francs  the  loom  for  which 
they  had  paid  as  many  thousand  francs.”  What  an 
effect  this  crisis  has  had  on  the  trade  I  could  not  say, 
as  I  have  no  recent  information  about  this  region. 
Very  probably  a  great  number  of  the  ribbon  weavers 
have  emigrated  to  St.  Etienne,  where  artistic  weaving 
is  continued,  while  the  cheapest  sorts  of  ribbon  must 
be  made  in  factories. 

The  manufacture  of  arms  occupies  from  5,000  to 
6,000  workers,  half  of  whom  are  in  St.  Etienne,  and 
the  remainder  in  the  neighbouring  county.  All  work 
is  done  in  small  workshops,  save  in  the  great  arm 
factory  of  the  State,  which  sometimes  will  employ 
from  10,000  to  15,000  persons,  and  sometimes  only  a 
couple  of  thousand  men. 

Another  important  trade  in  the  same  region  is  the 
manufacture  of  hardware,  which  is  all  made  in  small 
workshops,  in  the  neighbourhoods  of  St.  Etienne,  Le 
Chambon,  Eirminy,  Rive  de  Giers,  and  St.  Bonnet  le 
Chateau.  The  work  is  pretty  regular,  but  the  earnings 
are  low  as  a  rule.  And  yet  the  peasants  continue  to 
keep  to  those  trades,  as  they  cannot  go  on  without 
some  industrial  occupation  during  part  of  the 
year. 

The  yearly  production  of  silk  stuffs  in  France  attained 
no  less  than  7,558,000  kilogrammes  in  1881  ;  *  and 
most  of  the  5,000,000  to  6,000,000  kilogrammes  of  raw 

*  It  had  been  5,134,000  kilogrammes  in  1872.  Journal  de 
la  SocitU  de  Statistique  de  Paris,  September,  1883. 


APPENDIX.  457 

silk  which  were  manufactured  in  the  Lyons  region  were 
manufactured  by  hand.*  Twenty  years  before — that 
is,  about  1865 — there  were  only  from  6,000  to  8,000 
power-looms,  and  when  we  take  into  account  both  the 
prosperous  period  of  the  Lyons  silk  industry  about 
1876,  and  the  crisis  which  it  underwent  in  1880-1886, 
we  cannot  but  wonder  about  the  slowness  of  the  trans¬ 
formation  of  the  industry.  Such  is  also  the  opinion  of 
the  President  of  the  Lyons  Chamber  of  Commerce, 
who  wrote  me  that  the  domain  of  the  power-loom  is 
increased  every  year,  “  by  including  new  kinds  of 
stuffs,  which  formerly  were  reputed  as  unfeasible  in 
the  power-looms  ;  but,”  he  added,  “  the  transformation 
of  small  workshops  into  factories  still  goes  on  so  slowly 
that  the  total  number  of  power-looms  reaches  only  from 
20,000  to  25,000  out  of  an  aggregate  of  from  100,000 
to  110,000.”  (Since  that  time  it  certainly  must  have 
considerably  increased.) 

The  leading  features  of  the  Lyons  silk  industry  are 
the  following  : — 

The  preparatory  work— winding  off,  warping  and  so 
on — is  mostly  made  in  small  workshops,  chiefly  at 
Lyons,  with  only  a  few  workshops  of  the  kind  in  the 
villages.  Dyeing  and  finishing  are  also  made — of 
course,  in  great  factories — and  it  is  especially  in  dyeing, 
which  occupies  4,000  to  5,000  hands,  that  the  Lyons 
manufacturers  have  attained  their  highest  repute. 
Not  only  silks  are  dyed  there,  but  also  cottons  and 
wools,  and  not  only  for  France,  but  also  to  some 
extent  for  London,  Manchester,  Vienna,  and  even 

*  I  take  these  figures  from  a  detailed  letter  which  the  Presi¬ 
dent  of  the  Lyons  Chamber  of  Commerce  kindly  directed  to  me 
in  April,  1885,  to  Clairvaux,  in  answer  to  my  inqxiirics  about  the 
subject.  I  avail  myself  of  this  opportunity  for  addressing  to  him 
my  best  thanks  for  his  most  interesting  communication. 


458 


APPENDIX. 

Moscow.  It  is  also  in  this  branch  that  the  best 
machines  have  to  be  mentioned.* 

As  to  the  weaving,  it  is  made,  as  we  just  saw,  on 
from  20,000  to  25,000  power-looms  and  from  75,000 
to  .  90,000  hand-looms,  which  partly  are  at  Lyons 
(from  15,000  to  18,000  hand-looms  in  1885)  and  chiefly 
in  the  villages.  The  workshops,  where  one  might 
formerly  find  several  compagrions  employed  by  one 
master,  have  a  tendency  to  disappear,  the  workshops 
mostly  having  now  but  from  two  to  three  hand-looms, 
on  which  the  father,  the  mother,  and  the  children  are 
working  together.  In  each  house,  in  each  storey  of 
the  Croix  Eousse,  you  find  until  now  such  small  work¬ 
shops.  The  fabricant  gives  the  general  indications  as 
to  the  kind  of  stuff  he  desires  to  be  woven,  and  his 
draughtsmen  design  the  pattern,  but  it  is  the  workman 
himself  who  must  find  the  way  to  weave  in  threads  of 
all  colours  the  patterns  sketched  on  paper.  He  thus 
continually  creates  something  new ;  and  many  im¬ 
provements  and  discoveries  have  been  made  by  workers 
whose  very  names  remain  unknown.']* 

The  Lyons  weavers  have  retained  until  now  the 
character  of  being  the  elite  of  their  trade  in  higher 
artistic  work  in  silk  stuffs.  The  finest,  really  artistic 
brocades,  satins  and  velvets,  are  woven  in  the  smallest 
workshops,  where  one  or  two  looms  only  are  kept. 
Unhappily  the  unsettled  character  of  the  demand  for 
such  a  high  style  of  work  is  often  a  cause  of  misery 
amongst  them.  In  former  times,  when  the  orders  for 

*  La  fabrique  lyonnaise  de  soieries.  Son  passd,  son  present. 
Imprime  par  ordre  de  la  Chambre  de  Commerce  de  Lyon,  1873. 
(Published  in  connection  with  the  Vienna  Exhibition.)’ 

f  Marius  Morand,  V organisation  ouvriere  de  la  fabrique  lyon¬ 
naise;  paper  read  before  the  Association  Frangaise  pour  l’avanoe- 
ment  des  Sciences,  in  1873. 


APPENDIX.  459 

higher  sorts  of  silks  became  scarce,  the  Lyons  weavers 
resorted  to  the  manufacture  of  stuffs  of  lower  qualities  : 
foulards ,  crepes,  tulles ,  of  which  Lyons  had  the  monopoly 
in  Europe.  But  now  the  commoner  kinds  of  goods  are 
manufactured  by  the  million,  on  the  one  side  by  the 
factories  of  Lyons,  Saxony,  Russia,  and  Great  Britain, 
and  on  the  other  side  by  peasants  in  tbe  neighbouring 
departments  of  France,  as  well  as  in  the  Swiss  villages 
of  the  cantons  of  Basel  and  Zurich,  and  in  the  villages 
of  the  Rhine  provinces,  Italy,  and  Russia. 

The  emigration  of  the  French  silk  industry  from 
the  towns  to  the  villages  began  long  ag'o — that  is, 
about  1817 — but  it  was  especially  in  the  ’sixties  that 
this  movement  took  a  great  development.  About  the 
year  1872  nearly  90,000  hand-looms  were  scattered, 
not  only  in  the  Rhone  department,  but  also  in  those 
of  Ain,  Isere,  Loire,  Saone-et-Loire,  and  even  those 
of  Drdme,  Ard&che,  and  Savoie.  Sometimes  the  looms 
were  supplied  by  the  merchants,  but  most  of  them 
were  bought  by  the  weavers  themselves,  and  it  was 
especially  women  and  girls  who  worked  on  them  at 
the  hours  free  from  agriculture.  But  already  since 
1835  the  emigration  of  the  silk  industry  from  the  city 
to  the  villages  began  in  the  shape  of  great  factories 
erected  in  the  villages,  and  such  factories  continue 
to  spread  in  the  country,  making  terrible  havoc  amidst 
the  rural  populations. 

When  a  new  factory  is  built  in  a  village  it  attracts 
at  once  the  girls,  and  partly  also  the  boys  of  the  neigh¬ 
bouring  peasantry.  The  girls  and  boys  are  always 
happy  to  find  an  independent  livelihood  which  emanci¬ 
pates  them  from  the  control  of  the  family.  Conse¬ 
quently,  the  wages  of  the  factory  girls  are  extremely 
low.  At  the  same  time  the  distance  from  the  village 
to  the  factory  being  mostly  great,  the  girls  cannot 


460  APPENDIX. 

return  home  every  day,  the  less  so  as  the  hours  of 
labour  are  usually  long.  So  they  stay  all  the  week 
at  the  factory,  in  barracks,  and  they  only  return  home 
on  Saturday  evening  ;  while  at  sunrise  on  Monday 
a  waggon  makes  the  tour  of  the  villages,  and  brings 
them  back  to  the  factory.  Barrack  life — not  to 
mention  its  moral  consequences — soon  renders  the 
girls  quite  unable  to  work  in  the  fields.  And,  when 
they  are  grown  up,  they  discover  that  they  cannot 
maintain  themselves  at  the  low  wages  offered  by  the 
factory  ;  but  they  can  no  more  return  to  peasant  life. 
It  is  easy  to  see  what  havoc  the  factory  is  thus  doing 
in  the  villages,  and  how  unsettled  is  its  very  existence, 
based  upon  the  very  low  wages  offered  to  country 
girls.  It  destroys  the  peasant  home,  it  renders  the 
life  of  the  town  worker  still  more  precarious  on  account 
of  the  competition  it  makes  to  him ;  and  the  trade 
itself  is  in  a  perpetual  state  of  unsettledness. 

Some  information  about  the  present  state  of  the 
small  industries  in  this  region  will  be  found  in  the  text ; 
but,  unfortunately,  we  have  no  modern  description  of 
the  industrial  life  of  the  Lyons  region,  which  we  might 
compare  with  the  above. 


V.— SMALL  INDUSTRIES  AT  PARIS. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  enumerate  here  all  the 
varieties  of  small  industries  which  are  carried  on  at 
Paris  ;  nor  would  such  an  enumeration  be  complete, 
because  every  year  new  industries  are  brought  into 
life.  I  therefore  will  mention  only  a  few  of  the  most 
important  industries. 

A  great  number  of  them  are  connected,  of  course, 
with  ladies’  dress.  The  confections — that  is,  the 


APPENDIX.  461 

making  of  various  parts  of  ladies’  dress — occupy  no 
less  than  22,000  operatives  at  Paris,  and  their  pro¬ 
duction  attains  £3,000,000  every  year,  while  gowns 
give  occupation  to  15,000  women,  whose  annual  pro¬ 
duction  is  valued  at  £2,400,000.  Linen,  shoes,  gloves, 
and  so  on,  are  as  many  important  branches  of  the 
petty  trades  and  the  Paris  domestic  industries,  while 
one-fourth  part  of  the  stays  which  are  sewn  in  France 
(£500,000  out  of  £2,000,000)  are  made  in  Paris. 

Engraving,  book-binding,  and  all  kinds  of  fancy 
stationery,  as  well  as  the  manufacture  of  musical 
and  mathematical  instruments,  are  again  as  many 
branches  in  which  the  Paris  workmen  excel.  Basket¬ 
making  is  another  very  important  item,  the  finest 
sorts  only  being  made  in  Paris,  while  the  plainest  sorts 
are  made  in  the  centres  mentioned  in  the  text  (Haute 
Marne,  Aisne,  etc.).  Brushes  are  also  made  in  small 
workshops,  the  trade  being  valued  at  £800,000  both  at 
Paris  and  in  the  neighbouring  department  of  Oise. 

For  furniture,  there  are  at  Paris  as  many  as  4,340 
workshops,  in  which  three  or  four  operatives  per 
workshop  are  employed  on  the  average.  In  the 
watch  trade  we  find  2,000  workshops  with  only  6,000 
operatives,  and  their  production,  about  £1,000,000, 
reaches  nevertheless  nearly  one-third  part  of  the  total 
watch  production  in  France.  The  maroquinerie  gives 
the  very  high  figure  of  £500,000,  although  it  employs 
only  1,000  persons,  scattered  in  280  workshops,  this 
high  figure  itself  testifying  to  the  high  artistic  value 
of  the  Paris  leather  fancy  goods.  The  jewelry,  both 
for  articles  of  luxury,  and  for  all  descriptions  of  cheap 
goods,  is  again  one  of  the  specialities  of  the  Paris 
petty  trades  ;  and  another  well-known  speciality  is 
the  fabrication  of  artificial  flowers.  Finally,  we  must 
mention  the  carriage  and  saddlery  trades,  which  are 


462 


APPENDIX. 

carried  on  in  the  small  towns  round  Paris  ;  the  making 
of  fine  straw  hats  ;  glass  cutting,  and  painting  on  glass 
and  china ;  and  numerous  workshops  for  fancy  buttons, 
attire  in  mother-of-pearl,  and  small  goods  in  horn  and 
bone. 

W.— RESULTS  OF  THE  CENSUS  OF  THE 
FRENCH  INDUSTRIES  IN  1896. 

If  we  consult  the  results  of  the  census  of  1896, 
that  were  published  in  1901,  in  the  fourth  volume  of 
Resultats  statistiques  du  recensement  des  industries  et  des 
professions,  preceded  by  an  excellent  summary  written 
by  M.  Lucien  March,  we  find  that  the  general  im¬ 
pression  about  the  importance  of  the  small  industries 
in  France  conveyed  in  the  text  is  fully  confirmed  by 
the  numerical  data  of  the  census. 

It  is  only  since  1896,  M.  March  says  in  a  paper 
read  before  the  Statistical  Society  of  Paris,  that  a 
detailed  classification  of  the  workshops  and  factories 
according  to  the  number  of  their  operatives  became 
possible  ;  *  and  he  gives  us  in  this  paper,  in  a  series 
of  very  elaborate  tables,  a  most  instructive  picture  of 
the  present  state  of  industry  in  France. 

For  the  industries  proper — including  the  industries 
carried  on  by  the  State  and  the  Municipalities,  but 
excluding  the  transport  trades — the  results  of  the  census 
can  be  summed  up  as  follows  : — 

There  is,  first  of  all,  an  important  division  of  “  heads 
of  establishments  ( patrons )  working  alone,  independent 
artisans,  and  working-men  .without  a  permanent  em¬ 
ployment,”  which  contains  1,530,000  persons.  It  has 

*  Journal  de  la  Socitti,  de  Statistique  de  Paris ,  June  1901, 
pp.  189-192,  and  “  Resultats  Generaux,”  in  vol.  iv.  of  the  above- 
mentioned  publication. 


463 


APPENDIX. 

a  very  mixed  character,  as  we  find  here,  in  agriculture, 
the  small  farmer,  who  works  for  himself ;  and  the 
labourer,  who  works  by  the  day  for  occasional  farmers  ; 
and  in  industry  the  head  of  a  small  workshop,  who 
works  for  himself  ( patron-ouvrier )  ;  the  working-man, 
wlo  on  the  day  of  the  census  had  no  regular  employ¬ 
ment  ;  the  dressmaker,  who  works  sometimes  in  her  own 
room  and  sometimes  in  a  shop ;  and  so  on.  It  is  only  in 
an  indirect  way  that  M.  March  finds  out  that  this  division 
contains,  in  its  industrial  part,  nearly  483,000  artisans 
( patrons-ouvriers )  ;  and  independent  working-men  and 
women  ;  and  about  1,047,000  persons  of  both  sexes, 
temporarily  attached  to  some  industrial  establishment. 

There  are,  next,  37,705  industrial  establishments,  of 
which  the  heads  employ  no  hired  workmen,  but  are 
aided  by  one  or  more  members  of  their  own  families. 

We  have  thus,  at  least,  520,000  workshops  belonging 
to  the  very  small  industry. 

Next  to  them  come  575,530  workshops  and  factories, 
giving  occupation  to  more  than  3,000,000  persons. 
They  constitute  the  bulk  of  French  industry,  and  their 
subdivision  into  small,  middle-sized,  and  great  industry 
is  what  interests  us  at  this  moment. 

The  most  striking  point  is  the  immense  number  of 
establishments  having  only  from  one  to  ten  working¬ 
men  each.  No  less  than  539,449  such  workshops  and 
factories  have  been  tabulated,  which  makes  94  per  cent, 
of  all  the  industrial  establishments  in  France;  and  we  find 
in  them  more  than  one-third  of  all  workpeople  of  both 
sexes  engaged  in  industry — namely,  1,134,700  persons. 

Next  comes  the  class,  still  very  numerous  (28,626 
establishments  and  585,000  operatives),  where  we  find 
only  from  eleven  to  fifty  workmen  per  establishment. 
Nearly  two-thirds  of  these  small  factories  (17,342 
establishments,  240,000  workmen)  are  so  small  that 


464  APPENDIX. 

they  give  occupation  to  less  than  twenty  persons  each 
They  thus  belong  still  to  the  small  industry. 

After  that  comes  a  sudden  fall  in  the  figures.  There 
are  only  3,865  factories  having  from  fifty-one  to  100  em¬ 
ployees.  This  class  and  the  preceding  one  contain 
among  them  5J  per  cent.  of  all  the  industrial  establish¬ 
ments,  and  27  A  per  cent,  of  their  employees. 

The  class  of  factories  employing  from  101  to  500 
workmen  contains  3,145  establishments  (616,000 
workmen  and  other  employees).  But  that  of  from 
501  to  1,000  employees  per  factory  has  only  295 
establishments,  and  a  total  of  only  195,000  operatives. 
Taken  together,  these  two  classes  contain  less  than 
1  per  cent,  of  all  the  establishments  (six  per  1,000), 
and  26  per  cent,  of  all  the  workmen,. 

Finally,  the  number  of  factories  and  works  having 
more  than  a  thousand  workmen  and  employees  each  is 
very  small.  It  is  only  149.  Out  of  them,  108  have  from 
1,001  to  2,000  workmen,  twenty-one  have  from  2,001 
to  5,000,  and  ten  only  have  more  than  5,000  workmen. 
These  149  very  big  factories  and  works  give  occupation 
to  313,000  persons  only,  out  of  more  than  3,000,000 — 
that  is,  only  10  per  cent,  of  all  the  industrial  workers. 

It  thus  appears  that  more  than  99  per  cent,  of  all 
the  industrial  establishments  in  France — that  is, 
571,940  out  of  575,529 — have  less  than  100  workmen 
each.  They  give  occupation  to  2,000,000  persons,  and 
represent  an  army  of  571,940  employers.  More  than 
that.  The  immense  majority  of  that  number  (568,075 
employers)  belong  to  the  category  of  those  who  employ 
less  than  fifty  workmen  each.  And  I  do  not  yet  count 
in  their  number  520,000  employers  and  artisans  who 
work  for  themselves,  or  with  the  aid  of  a  member  of 
the  family. 

It  is  evident  that  in  France,  as  everywhere,  the 


APPENDIX.  465 

petty  trades  represent  a  very  important  factor  of  the 
industrial  life.  Economists  have  been  too  hasty  in 
celebrating  their  death.  And  this  conclusion  becomes 
still  more  apparent  when  one  analyses  the  different 
industries  separately,  taking  advantage  of  the  tables 
given  in  Resultats  Statistiques.  A  very  important  fact 
appears  from  this  analysis — namely,  that  there  are 
only  three  branches  of  industry  in  which  oue  can  speak 
of  a  strong  “  concentration  ” — the  mines,  metallurgy, 
and  the  State’s  industries,  to  which  one  may  add  the 
textiles  and  ironmongery,  but  always  remembering  that 
in  these  two  branches  immense  numbers  of  small  fac¬ 
tories  continue  to  prosper  by  the  side  of  the  great  ones. 

In  all  other  branches  the  small  trades  are  dominant, 
to  such  an  extent  that  more  than  95  per  cent,  of  the 
employers  employ  less  than  fifty  workmen  each.  In  the 
quarries,  in  all  branches  of  the  alimentation,  in  the 
book  trade,  clothing,  leather,  wood,  metallic  goods, 
and  even  the  brick-works,  china  and  glass  works,  we 
hardly  find  one  or  two  factories  out  of  each  hundred 
employing  more  than  fifty  workmen. 

The  three  industries  that  make  an  exception  to  this 
rule  are,  we  have  said,  metallurgy,  the  great  works  of 
the  State,  and  the  mines.  In  metallurgy  two-thirds 
of  the  works  have  more  than  fifty  men  each,  and  it  is 
here  that  we  find  some  twenty  great  works  employing 
each  of  them  more  than  one  thousand  men.  The  works 
of  the  State,  which  include  the  great  shipbuilding 
yards,  are  evidently  in  the  same  case.  They  contain 
thirty-four  establishments,  having  more  than  500  men 
each,  and  fourteen  employing  more  than  1,000.  And 
finally,  in  the  mines — one  hardly  would  believe  that — 
more  than  one-half  of  all  establishments  employ  less 
than  fifty  workmen  each  ;  but  15  per  cent,  of  them 
have  more  than  500  workmen  ;  forty-one  mines  are 


466  APPENDIX. 

worked  by  a  staff  of  more  than  1,000  persons  each,  and 
six  out  of  them  employ  even  more  than  5,000  miners. 

It  is  only  in  these  three  branches  that  one  finds  s 
rather  strong  “  concentration  ”  ;  and  yet,  the  small 
industry  continues  to  exist,  as  we  saw  it  already  in 
England,  by  the  side  of  the  great  one,  even  in  mining, 
and  still  more  so  in  all  branches  of  metallurgy. 

As  to  the  textile  industries,  they  have  exactly  the 
same  character  as  in  England.  We  find  here  a  certain 
number  of  very  large  establishments  (forty  establish¬ 
ments  having  each  of  them  more  than  1,000  work¬ 
people),  and  especially  we  see  a  great  development 
of  the  middle-sized  factories  (1,300  mills  having  from 
100  to  500  workpeople).  But  on  the  other  side,  the  small 
industry  is  also  very  numerous.* 

Quite  the  same  is  also  seen  in  the  manufacture  of  all 
metallic  goods  (iron,  steel,  brass).  Here,  also,  by  the 
side  of  a  few  great  works  (seventeen  works  occupy  each 
of  them  more  than  1,000  workpeople  and  salaried 
employees ;  out  of  them  five  employ  more  than 
2,000  persons,  and  one  more  than  5,000)  ;  and  by  the 
side  of  a  great  number  of  middle-sized  works  (440 
establishments  employing  from  100  to  500  persons), 
we  find  more  than  100,000  artisans  who  work  single- 
handed,  or  with  the  aid  of  their  families  ;  and  72,600 
works  which  have  only  from  three  to  four  workpeople. 

In  the  india-rubber  works,  and  those  for  the  manu¬ 
facture  of  'paper ,  the  middle-sized  factories  are  still 
Well  represented  (13  per  cent,  of  all  the  establishments 

*  Here  is  how  they  are  distributed  :  Workmen  working 
single-handed,  124,544  ;  with  their  families,  but  without  paid 
workmen,  8,000  ;  less  than  10  workmen,  34,433  factories  ;  from 
10  to  100  workpeople,  4,605  factories  ;  from  101  to  200  work¬ 
people,  746  factories  ;  from  201  to  500  workpeople,  554  ;  from 
501  to  1,000,  123;  from  1,001  to  2,000,  38;  more  than  2,000, 

2  factories. 


APPENDIX.  467 

have  more  than  fifty  workmen  each)  ;  but  the  re¬ 
mainder  belongs  to  the  small  industry.  It  is  the  same 
in  the  chemical  works.  There  is  in  this  branch  some 
ten  factories  employing  more  than  500  persons,  and 
100  which  employ  from  101  to  500  people  ;  but  the 
remainder  is  1,000  of  small  works  employing  from 
ten  to  fifty  people,  and  3,800  of  the  very  small  works 
(less  than  ten  workers). 

In  all  other  branches  it  is  the  small  or  the  very 
small  industry  which  dominates.  Thus,  in  the  manu¬ 
facture  of  articles  of  food,  there  are  only  eight  factories 
employing  more  than  500  people  each,  and  92,000 
small  establishments  having  less  than  ten  workpeople 
each.  In  the  printing  industry  the  immense  majority 
of  establishments  are  very  small,  and  employ  from 
five  to  ten,  or  from  ten  to  fifty  workpeople. 

As  to  the  manufacture  of  clothing,  it  entirely  belongs 
to  the  small  industry.  Only  five  factories  employ  more 
than  200  each  ;  but  the  remainder  represents  630,000 
independent  artisans,  men  and  women  ;  9,500  work¬ 
shops  where  the  work  is  done  by  the  family  ;  and 
132,000  workshops  and  factories  occupying  less  than 
ten  workpeople  each.* 

The  different  branches  dealing  with  straw,  feathers, 
hair,  leather,  gloves,  again,  belong  to  the  small  and  the 
very  small  industry :  125,000  artisans  and  43,000 

small  establishments  employing  from  three  to  four 
persons  each. 

Shall  I  speak  of  the  factories  dealing  with  wood, 

*  In  an  excellent  monograph  dealing  with  this  branch  {Le 
d^veloppement  de  la  fdbrique  et  le  travail  d  domicile  dans  les 
industries  de  Vhabillement ,  by  Professor  Albert  Aftalion,  Paris, 
1906),  the  author  gives  most  valuable  data  as  to  the  proper 
domains  of  domestic  work  and  the  factory,  and  shows  how, 
why,  and  in  which  domains  domestic  work  successfully  com¬ 
petes  with  the  factory. 


468 


APPENDIX. 

furniture,  brushes,  and  so  on  ?  True,  there  are  in  these 
branches  two  large  factories  employing  nearly  2,000 
persons  ;  but  there  are  also  214,260  independent  arti¬ 
sans  and  105,400  small  factories  and  workshops  em¬ 
ploying  less  than  ten  persons  each. 

Needless  to  say  that  jewelry,  the  cutting  of  precious 
stones,  and  stone-cutting  for  masonry  belong  entirely 
to  the  small  industry,  no  more  than  ten  to  twenty 
works  employing  more  than  100  persons  each.  Only 
in  ceramics  and  in  brick-making  do  we  find  by  the 
side  of  the  very  small  works  (8,930  establishments), 
and  'the  small  ones  (1,277  establishments  employing 
from  ten  to  fifty  workpeople),  334  middle-sized  works 
(fifty  to  200  workpeople),  ninety- three  of  the  great 
industry  (201  to  1,000),  and  seven  of  the  very  great 
(more  than  1,000  workpeople).* 

X.— THE  SMALL  INDUSTRIES  IN  GERMANY. 

The  literature  of  the  small  industries  in  Germany 
being  very  bulky,  the  chief  works  upon  this  subj  ect  may 
be  found,  either  in  full  or  reviewed,  in  Schmoller’s 

*  The  industrial  establishments  having  more  than  1,000 
employees  each  are  distributed  as  follows  :  Mining,  41  ;  textiles, 
40  (123  have  from  500  to  1,000)  ;  industries  of  the  State  and  the 
Communes,  14  ;  metallurgy,  l7  ;  working  of  metals — iron,  steel, 
brass — 17  ;  quarries,  2  ;  alimentation,  3  ;  chemical  industries, 
2  ;  india-rubber,  paper,  cardboard,  0  (9  have  from  500  to  1,000) ; 
books,  polygraphy,  0  (22  have  from  500  to  1,000) ;  dressing  of 
stuffs,  clothing,  2  (9  from  500  to  1,000);  straw,  feathers, 
hair,  0  (1  from  500  to  1,000) ;  leather,  skins,  2  ;  wood,  cabinet¬ 
making,  brushes,  etc.,  1  ;  fine  metals,  jewelry,  0 ;  cutting  of 
precious  stones,  0 ;  stone-cutting  for  buildings,  0 ;  earth¬ 
works  and  building,  1  ;  bricks,  ceramics,  7  ;  preparation  and 
distribution  of  food,  0 ;  total,  149  out  of  575,531  establish¬ 
ments.  To  these  figures  we  may  add  six  large  establishments 
in  the  transports,  and  five  in  different  branches  of  trade.  We 
may  note  also  that,  by  means  of  various  calculations,  M.  March 


APPENDIX.  469 

Jahrbiicher,  and  in  Conrad’s  Sammlung  national-okono- 
mischer  und  statistischer  Abhandlungen.  For  a  general 
review  of  the  subject  and  rich  bibliographical  indica¬ 
tions,  Schonberg’s  Volkwirthschaftslehre,  vol.  ii.,  which 
contains  excellent  remarks  about  the  proper  domain 
of  small  industries  (p.  401  seq.),  as  well  as  the  above- 
mentioned  publication  of  K.  Bucher  (U ntersuchungen 
iiber  die  Lage  des  Handwerks  in  Deutschland),  will  be 
found  most  valuable.  The  work  of  0.  Schwarz,  Die 
Betriebsformen  der  modernen  Grossindustrie  (in  Zeit- 
schrift  fur  Staatswissenschaft,  vol.  xxv.,  p.  535),  is 
interesting  by  its  analysis  of  the  respective  advan¬ 
tages  of  both  the  great  and  the  small  industries,  which 
brings  the  author  to  formulate  the  following  three 
factors  in  favour  of  the  former  :  (1)  economy  in  the 
cost  of  motive  power  ;  (2)  division  of  labour  and  its 
harmonic  organisation  ;  and  (3)  the  advantages  offered 
for  the  sale  of  the  produce.  Of  these  three  factors,  the 
first  is  more  and  more  eliminated  every  year  by  the 
progress  achieved  in  the  transmission  of  power  ;  the 
second  exists  in  small  industries  as  well,  and  to  the 
same  extent,  as  in  the  great  ones  (watchmakers,  toy- 
makers,  and  so  on)  ;  so  that  only  the  third  remains 
in  full  force  ;  but  this  factor,  as  already  mentioned 
in  the  text  of  this  book,  is  a  social  factor  which  entirely 
depends  upon  the  degree  of  development  of  the  spirit 
of  association  amongst  the  producers. 

A  detailed  industrial  census  having  been  taken  in 
1907,  in  addition  to  those  of  1882  and  1895,  most 
important  and  quite  reliable  data  showing  the  im¬ 
portance  and  the  resistance  of  the  small  industries  were 
brought  to  light,  and  a  series  of  most  interesting 

comes  to  the  conclusion  that  91  per  cent,  of  the  workmen  and 
employees  in  industry  and  44  per  cent,  in  commerce  are  em¬ 
ployees — that  is,  clerks,  managers,  and  so  on. 


470 


APPENDIX. 


monographs  dealing  with  this  subject  have  been 
published.  Let  me  name,  therefore,  some  of  those 
which  could  be  consulted  with  profit :  Dr.  Fr.  Zahn, 
Wirtschajtliche  Entwicklung,  unter  besonderer  Beriick- 
sichtigung  der  V olkszahlung ,  1905,  sowie  der  Berujs 
und  Betriebszcihlung ,  1907 ;  Bonder abdruck  aus  der 
Annalen  des  Deutschen  Reichs,  Munchen,  1910  and 
1911  ;  Dr.  Josef  Grunzel,  System  der  Industriepo- 
litik,  Leipzig,  1905 ;  and  Der  Sieg  des  Industria- 
lismus ,  Leipzig,  1911  ;  W.  Sombart,  “  Verlagssystem 
(Hausindustrie)  ”,  in  Conrad,  Iiandworterbuch  der 
Staatswissenschaften,  3te  Auflage,  Bd.  VIII. ;  R.  van 
der  Borght,  Beruj ,  Gesellschajtliche  Gliederung  und 
Betrieb  im  Deutschen  Reiche,  in  Vortrdge  der  Gehe- 
Stijtung ,  Bd.  II.,  1910 ;  and  Heinrich  Koch,  Die 
Deutsche  Hausindustrie,  M.  Gladbach,  1905.  Many 
other  works  will  be  found  mentioned  by  these  authors. 

In  all  these  books  the  reader  will  find  a  further 
confirmation  of  the  ideas  about  the  small  industries 
that  are  expressed  in  chapters  vi,  and  vii.  When  I 
developed  them  in  the  first  edition  of  this  book,  it 
was  objected  to  me  that,  although  the  existence  of  a 
great  number  of  small  industries  is  out  of  question, 
and  although  their  great  extension  in  a  country  so 
far  advanced  in  its  industrial  development  as  England 
was  not  known  to  economists,  still  the  fact  proves 
nothing.  These  industries  are  a  mere  survival ;  and 
if  we  had  data  about  the  different  classes  of  industry 
at  different  periods,  we  should  see  how  rapidly  the 
small  industries  are  disappearing. 

Now  we  have  such  data  for  Germany,  for  a  period 
of  twenty-five  years,  in  the  three  censuses  of  1882, 
1895,  and  1907,  and,  what  is  still  more  valuable,  these 
twenty-five  years  belong  to  a  moment  in  the  life  of 
Germany  when  a  powerful  industry  has  developed  on 


APPENDIX.  471 

an  Immense  scale  with  a  great  rapidity.  Here  It  Is 
that  the  dying  out  of  the  small  industries,  their  “  ab¬ 
sorption  ”  by  the  great  concerns,  and  the  supposed 
“  concentration  of  capital  ”  ought  to  be  seen  in  full. 

But  the  numerical  results,  as  they  appear  from  the 
three  censuses,  and  as  they  have  been  interpreted 
by  those  who  have  studied  them,  are  pointing  out  to 
quite  the  reverse.  The  position  of  the  small  indus¬ 
tries  in  the  life  of  an  industrial  country  is  exactly 
the  same  which  could  have  been  foreseen  twenty-five 
years  ago,  and  very  often  it  is  described  in  the  very 
same  words  that  I  have  used. 

The  German  Statistisches  Jahrbuch  gives  us  the  dis¬ 
tribution  of  workmen  in  the  different  industries  of  the 
German  Empire  in  1882  and  1895.  Leaving  aside  all 
the  concerns  which  belong  to  trade  and  those  for  the 
sale  of  alcoholic  drinks  (955,680  establishments, 
2,165,638  workpeople),  as  also  42,321  establishments 
belonging  to  horticulture,  fishing,  and  poultry  (103,128 
workpeople  in  1895),  there  were,  in  all  the  industries, 
including  mining,  1,237,000  artisans  working  single- 
handed,  and  over  900,000  establishments  in  which 
6,730,500  persons  were  employed.  Their  distribution 
in  establishments  of  different  sizes  was  as  follows  : — 


1895. 

Artisans  working  single- 
handed  . 

Establish¬ 

ments. 

.  1,237,000 

Employees. 

1,237,000* 

Average 
per  estab¬ 
lishment. 

From  1  to  5  employees  . 

752,572 

1,954,125 

2-6 

„  6  to  50  ,, 

139,459 

1,902,049 

13 

Over  50  . 

17,941 

2,907,329 

162 

Total 

909,972 

6,763,503 

7-5 

(With  the  artisans) 

.  (2,146,972) 

(8,000,503) 

(4] 

*  In  reality  there  are  no  employees.  I  give  this  figure  only 
for  the  totals. 


472 


APPENDIX. 

Twelve  years  later  the  industries,  as  they  appeared 
in  the  next  census,  made  in  1907,  were  distributed  as 
follows : — 


1907. 

Establish¬ 

ments. 

Employees. 

Average 
per  estab¬ 
lishment. 

Artisans  working  single- 

handed  . 

.  994,743 

994,743* 

— 

From  1  to  5  employees  875,518 

2,205,539 

2-5 

„  6  to  10  ,, 

96,849 

717,282 

7 

11  to  50 

90,225 

1,996,906 

22 

„  51  to  100 

15,783 

1,103,949 

70 

„  101  to  500  „ 

11,827 

2,295,401 

194 

Over  500  „ 

1,423 

1,538,577 

1,081 

Total 

1,091,625 

9,858,120 

9 

(With  the  artisans) 

(2,086,368) 

(10,852,863) 

(5) 

Por  the  sake  of  comparison,  I  give  also  (in  round 
figures)  the  numbers  of  establishments  obtained  by 
the  three  censuses : — 


Artisans  working  single- 
handed  . 

1882. 

.  1,430,000 

1895. 

1,237,000 

1907. 

995,000 

From  1  to  5  employees  . 

746,000 

753,000 

875,000 

„  6  to  50  ,, 

85,000 

139,000 

187,000 

Over  50  „  .  . 

9,000 

18,000 

30,000 

Total . 

830,000 

910,000 

1,092,000 

(With  the  artisans) 

.  (2,270,000)  (2,147,000)  (2,086,000) 

What  appears  quite  distinctly  from  the  last  census 
is  the  rapid  decrease  in  the  numbers  of  artisans  who 
work  single  -  handed,  mostly  without  the  aid  of 
machinery.  Such  an  individual  mode  of  production 
by  hand  is  naturally  on  the  decrease,  even  many 
artisans  resorting  now  to  some  sort  of  motive  power  and 

*  In  reality  there  are  no  employees.  I  give  this  figure  only  for 
the  totals. 


APPENDIX. 


473 


taking  one  or  two  hired  aids  ;  but  this  does  not  prove 
in  the  least  that  the  small  industries  carried  on  with 
the  aid  of  machinery  should  be  on  the  wane.  The 
census  of  1907  proves  quite  the  contrary,  and  all 
those  who  have  studied  it  are  bound  to  recognise  it. 

“  Of  a  pronounced  decay  of  the  small  establishments 
in  which  five  or  less  persons  are  employed,  is,  of 
course,  no  sign,”  writes  Dr.  Zahn  in  the  afore-men¬ 
tioned  work.  Out  of  the  14-3  million  people  who  live 
on  industry,  full  5*4  million  belong  to  the  small 
industry. 

Far  from  decreasing,  this  category  has  considerably 
increased  since  1895  (from  732,572  establishments 
with  1,954,125  employees  in  1895,  to  875,518  establish¬ 
ments  and  2,205,539  employees  in  1907).  Moreover, 
it  is  not  only  the  very  small  industry  which  is  on  the 
increase  ;  it  is  also  the  small  one  which  has  increased 
even  more  than  the  preceding — namely,  by  47,615 
establishments  and  812,139  employees. 

As  to  the  very  great  industry,  a  closer  analysis  of 
what  the  German  statisticians  describe  as  giant 
establishments  ( Riesenbetriebe )  shows  that  they  belong 
chiefly  to  industries  working  for  the  State,  or  created 
in  consequence  of  State-granted  monopolies.  Thus, 
for  instance,  the  Krupp  Shareholders  Company  employ 
69,500  persons  in  their  nine  different  establishments, 
and  everyone  knows  that  the  works  of  Krupp  are  in 
reality  a  dependency  of  the  State. 

The  opinions  of  the  above-named  German  authors 
about  the  facts  revealed  by  the  industrial  censuses 
are  very  interesting. 

In  speaking  of  the  small  industries  in  Germany, 
W.  Sombart  writes  in  the  article,  “  Verlagssystem 
(Hausindustrie),”  in  Conrad’s  Han&wortezbuch :  “It 
results  from  the  census  of  1907  that  the  losses  in  the 


474 


APPENDIX. 

small  industries  are  almost  exclusively  limited  to  those 
home  industries  which  are  usually  described  as  the 
old  ones ;  while  the  increases  belong  to  the  home 
industries  of  modern  origin.”  The  statistical  data 
thus  confirm  that  “at  the  present  time  a  sort  of 
rejuvenation  is  going  on  in  the  home  industries  ;  in¬ 
stead  of  those  of  them  which  are  dying  out,  new  ones, 
almost  equal  in  numbers,  are  growing  up”  (p.  242). 
Prof.  Sombart  points  out  that  the  same  is  going  on  in 
Switzerland,  and  refers  to  some  new  works  on  this 
subject.* 

Dr.,J.  Grunzel  comes  to  a  similar  conclusion  :  “  Life 
experience  shows  that  the  home  industries  are  not  a 
form  of  industrial  organisation  which  has  had  its 
time,”  he  writes  in  his  afore-mentioned  work.  “On 
the  contrary,  it  proves  to  be  possessed  of  a  great  life 
force  in  certain  branches.  It  is  spread  in  all  branches 
in  which  handwork  offers  advantages  above  the 
work  of  the  machine  ”  (p.  46).  It  is  also  retained 
wherever  the  value  of  labour  exceeds  very  much  the 
value  of  the  raw  produce ;  and  finally,  in  all  the 
branches  devoted  to  articles  which  are  rapidly  changing 
with  the  seasons  or  the  vagaries  of  fashion.  And 
he  shows  (pp.  46  and  149)  how  the  home  industries  have 
been  increasing  in  Germany  from  1882  to  1895,  and 
how  they  are  widely  spread  in  Austria,  France,  Switzer¬ 
land,  Italy,  Belgium,  and  England. 

The  conclusions  of  R.  van  der  Borght  are  quite 
similar. 

“  It  is  true,”  Dr.  van  der  Borght  says,  “  that  the 

*  Die  Hausinduatrie  in  der  Schweiz  :  Auszug  aus  der  Ergeb - 
nissen  der  Eidgenossischen  Betriebszahlung  von  Aug.  9 ,  1905  ; 
E.  B-yser,  L'industrie  horlogere,  Zurich,  1909;  J.  Beck,  Die 
Schweizerische  Hausindustrie,  ihre  soziale  und  wirthschaftliche 
Lage,  Griitliverein,  1909. 


APPENDIX.  475 

numbers  of  artisans  working  single-handed  have 
diminished  in  numbers  in  most  industries  ;  but  they 
still  represent  two-fifths  of  all  industrial  establish¬ 
ments,  and  even  more  than  one-half  in  several  industries. 
At  the  same  time,  the  small  establishments  (having 
from  one  to  five  workers)  have  increased  in  numbers, 
and  they  contain  nearly  one-half  of  all  the  industrial 
establishments,  and  even  more  than  that  in  several 
groups.” 

As  for  Koch’s  work,  Die  Deutsche  Hausindustrie,  it 
deserves  special  mention  for  the  discussion  it  contains 
of  the  measures  advocated,  on  the  one  side,  for  the 
weeding  out  of  the  domestic  industries,  and,  on  the 
other  side,  for  improving  the  condition  of  the  workers 
and  the  industries  themselves  by  the  means  of  co-opera¬ 
tion,  credit,  workshops’  inspection,  and  the  like. 

Y.— THE  DOMESTIC  INDUSTRIES  IN 
x  SWITZERLAND. 

We  have  most  interesting  monographs  dealing  with 
separate  branches  of  the  small  industries  of  Switzerland, 
but  we  have  not  yet  such  comprehensive  statistical  data 
as  those  which  have  been  mentioned  in  the  text  in 
speaking  of  Germany  and  France.  It  was  only  in  the 
year  1901  that  the  first  attempt  was  made  to  get  the 
exact  numbers  of  workpeople  employed  in  what  the 
Swiss  statisticians  describe  as  Hausindustrie ,  or  “  the 
domestic  industries’  extension  of  the  factory  indus¬ 
tries  ”  ( der  hausindustrielle  Anhang  der  F abrikindustrie) . 
Up  till  then  these  numbers  remained  “  an  absolutely 
unknown  quantity.”  For  many  it  was,  therefore,  a 
revelation  when  a  first  rough  estimate,  made  by  the 
factory  inspectors,  gave  the  figure  of  52,291  work- 


476 


APPENDIX. 

people  belonging  to  this  category,  as  against  243,200 
persons  employed  in  all  the  factories,  large  and  small, 
of  the  same  branches.  A  few  years  later,  Schuler, 
in  Zeitung  fur  Schweizerische  Statistik,  1904  (reprinted 
since  as  a  volume),  came  to  the  figure  of  131,299  per¬ 
sons  employed  in  the  domestic  industries ;  and  yet 
this  figure,  although  it  is  much  nearer  to  reality  than 
the  former,  is  still  below  the  real  numbers.  Finally,  an 
official  census  of  the  industries,  made  in  1905,  gave  the 
figure  of  92,162  persons  employed  in  the  domestic 
industries  in  70,873  establishments,  in  the  following 
branches — textiles,  watches  and  jewellery,  straw-plait¬ 
ing,  clothing  and  dress,  wood-carving,  tobacco.  They 
thus  represent  more  than  one-fourth  (28*5  per  cent.) 
of  the  317,027  operatives  employed  in  Switzerland  in 
these  same  branches,  and  15*7  per  cent,  of  all  the 
industrial  operatives,  who  numbered  585,574  in  1905. 

Out  of  the  just-mentioned  92,162  workpeople,  regis¬ 
tered  as  belonging  to  the  domestic  trades,  nearly 
three-quarters  (66,061  in  49,168  establishments)  belong 
to  the  textile  industry,  chiefly  knitting  and  the  silks ; 
then  comes  the  watch-trade  (12,871  persons  in  9,186 
establishments),  straw-plaiting,  and  dress.  How¬ 
ever,  these  figures  are  still  incomplete.  Not  only 
several  smaller  branches  of  the  domestic  trades  were 
omitted  in  the  census,  but  also  the  children  under 
fourteen  years  of  age  employed  in  the  domestic  trades, 
whose  numbers  are  estimated  at  32,300,  were  not 
counted.  Besides,  the  census  having  been  made  in  the 
summer,  during  the  “  strangers’  season,”  a  considerable 
number  of  persons  employed  in  a  variety  of  domestic 
trades  during  the  winter  did  not  appear  in  the  census. 

It  must  also  be  noted  that  the  Swiss  census  includes 
under  the  name  of  Heimarbeit  (domestic  trades)  only 
those  “  dependencies  of  the  industrial  employers  99  which 


APPENDIX.  477 

do  not  represent  separate  factories  placed  under  the 
employer’s  management ;  so  that  those  workshops  and 
small  factories,  the  produce  of  which  is  sold  directly  to 
the  consumers,  as  also  the  small  factories  directly 
managed  by  small  employers,  are  not  included  in  this 
category.  If  all  that  be  taken  into  consideration,  we 
must  agree  with  the  conclusion  that  the  “  domestic 
trades  have  in  Switzerland  a  much  greater  extension 
than  in  any  other  country  of  Europe  ”  (save  Russia), 
which  we  find  in  an  elaborate  recent  work,  published  in 
connection  with  the  1910  exhibition  of  Swiss  domestic 
industries,  and  edited  by  Herr  Jac.  Lorenz  ( Die  wirt- 
schajtlichen  und  sozialen  Verhaltnisse  in  der  Schivei- 
zerischen  Heimarbeit,  Zurich,  1910-1911,  p.  27). 

A  feature  of  importance  which  appears  from  this  last 
work  is,  that  more  than  one-half  of  the  workers  engaged 
in  domestic  trades  have  some  other  source  of  income 
besides  these  trades.  Very  many  of  them  carry  on 
agriculture,  so  that  it  has  been  said  that  in  Switzerland 
“  the  domestic  trades’  question  is  as  much  a  feasant 
question  as  a  labour  question.” 

It  would  be  impossible  to  sum  up  in  this  place  the 
interesting  data  contained  in  the  first  four  fascicles 
published  by  Herr  Lorenz,  which  deal  with  the  cotton, 
the  silk,  and  the  linen  domestic  industries,  their  struggles 
against  the  machine,  their  defeats  in  some  branches 
and  their  holding  the  ground  in  other  branches,  and  so 
on.  I  must  therefore  refer  the  reader  to  this  very 
instructive  publication. 


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Havelock’s  March. 

Up  from  Slavery. 

Recollections  of  the  Right  Hon. 

Sir  Algernon  West. 

Great  Englishmen  of  the  Sixteenth 
Century. 

Where  Black  Rules  White. 
Historical  Mysteries. 

The  Strenuous  Life. 

Memories  Grave  and  Gay. 

Life  of  Danton. 

A  Pocketful  of  Sixpences. 

The  Romance  of  a  Proconsul  (Sir 
George  Grey). 

A  Book  about  Roses. 

Random  Reminiscences. 

The  London  Police  Courts. 

The  Amateur  Poacher. 

The  Bancrofts. 

At  the  Works. 

Mexico  as  I  Saw  It. 

Eighteenth  Century  Vignettes. 

The  Great  Andes  of  the  Equator. 
The  Early  History  of  C.  J.  Fox. 
Through  the  Heart  of  Patagonia. 
Browning  as  a  Religious  Teacher. 
Life  of  Tolstoy. 

Paris  to  New  York  by  Land. 

Life  of  Lewis  Carroll. 

A  Naturalist  in  the  Guianas. 

The  Mantle  of  the  East. 

Letters  of  Dr.  John  Brown. 
Jubilee  Book  of  Cricket. 

By  Desert  Ways  to  Baghdad. 

Some  Old  Love  Stories. 


Others  in  Preparation. 


THOMAS  NELSON  AND  SONS. 


DATE  DUE 


UNIVERSITY  PRODUCTS,  INC.  #859-5503 


BOSTON  COLLEGE 


903 


022  3081 


